Gallery: Driving the Awesome Mercedes 300 SL 'Gullwing'
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From 1954 to 1957, a crafty bunch of Germans built what is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular cars ever sold. It was stylish, impossibly well-crafted, technologically advanced and fast as hell. The badge on its trunk identified it as a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, but most people knew it by its upward-swinging doors and by its nickname: Gullwing. Mercedes launched a Gullwing tribute last year in the form of the [SLS AMG supercar.](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/mercedes-amg-sls-gullwing/) After giving the SLS launch time to sink in, we got a chance to look back at the car that inspired it. We recently drove a Gullwing and a [300 SL](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/2010/12/open-this-time-capsule-of-classic-cars/?pid=415) roadster. As life-changing moments go, they don't get much better than this. And the sound? Oh, the *sound.* *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
NASA Administrator Thomas Paine. Image: NASA.02mercedes-benz-300-sl-gullwing-3
Like many legendary machines, the Gullwing's roots lie in [auto racing](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/auto-racing/). In the years after World War II, Mercedes-Benz had little international presence and was known largely as a manufacturer of staid, solid luxury machines. (Remember, this is the brand that spent most of the 1940s building famously durable aircraft engines and Adolf Hitler's unstoppable, house-sized staff cars.) To recapture some of its prewar competition glory, Stuttgart charged its chief development engineer, [Rudolf Ulhenhaut](http://media.daimler.com/dcmedia/0-921-614822-1-874810-1-0-0-0-0-0-11702-614318-0-1-0-0-0-0-0.html), with building a world-beater. Ulhenhaut proceeded to stuff a production-based, overhead-cam, 3.0-liter straight-6 into an elegant space frame constructed of hundreds of steel tubes. He gave the package four-wheel independent suspension — albeit with a production-derived swing axle in the rear — and an impossibly sexy, low-drag aluminum skin. The result was known as the W194-chassis 300 SL: *300* for 3 liters, and *SL* for *Sport Leicht*, or sport light. Several W194s were built in coupe and roadster form. The roadsters were pretty, but the coupes, with their vertically swinging doors — a shockingly elegant feature dreamed up because the 194's frame tubes prohibited conventional doors — were eye-wateringly gorgeous. In typical fashion, Mercedes took the car racing and essentially conquered the world. In 1952, W194s finished one-two at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one-two-three at the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring and first at the Carrera Panamericana. __Above:__ Karl Kling, Hans Klenk and a W194 coupe at the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. *Photo: Mercedes-Benz*
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Still, the W194 was a race car, and no race car lives forever. Competition machines are ethereal and short-lived, destined to be relevant and competitive for a short time and then retired. The 194's technology evolved and appeared in other racers, but the cars themselves were retired within a few short years. Then came Max Hoffman. And he wouldn't shut up. __Above:__ A naked Mercedes-Benz W196 racer, one of the W194's successors. (Note the later, eight-cylinder powerplant.) Few pictures exist of unclothed 194s, so we chose this image for illustrative purposes. The 196's construction and space-frame design were similar to that of the 194. *Photo: Mercedes-Benz*
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If Hoffman's name sounds familiar, that's because he essentially pulled America's foreign-car market out of his tuchas. He was born in Austria but moved to the United States following World War II, intent on turning us on to European cars. The list of manufacturers he introduced to our market is a mile long and includes such luminaries as Alfa Romeo, [BMW](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/bmw/), Delahaye, Fiat, [Jaguar](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/jaguar/), [Mercedes-Benz](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/mercedes-benz/), [Porsche](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/porsche/) and [Volkswagen](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/volkswagen/). He was cantankerous and demanding. He lived in a New York house designed and personally outfitted by Frank Lloyd Wright. And he had so much pull with European automakers — he effectively controlled their chunk of the American market in the 1950s, and could read customer demands better than most — that he could all but will [desirable concept cars](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/concept-cars/) into production. Chances are, you know Hoffman's work. He badgered the board members of Europe's manufacturers to create cars he thought would sell in America. The icons that resulted — machines like the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, [BMW 507](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/2010/07/henrik-fisker-design-gallery/3/) and 2002, and [Porsche 356 Speedster](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/2010/10/this-is-the-oldest-porsche-sold-in-america/) — need no introduction or explanation. One of those manufacturers was Mercedes-Benz, and one of those cars was the road-going 300 SL. The Gullwing. *Photo: Mercedes-Benz*
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Hoffman wasn't a man given to small statements. He once boasted that he paid more taxes than anyone else in the country, and he famously lost his lucrative Jaguar distributorship because he was too loyal to, and focused on, Mercedes-Benz. He knew his well-heeled customers, and he knew what they wanted. Mercedes hadn't initially planned to make a production car based on the W194, but Hoffman was convinced the brand couldn't survive in America without a high-end sports car. So he hounded Stuttgart's board. He wouldn't give up, and they couldn't make him go away. After lengthy deliberations, the board caved. Two cars came from Hoffman's pressing — a road-going 300 SL, known internally as W198, and a smaller, four-cylinder, open-topped version of the same shape, dubbed 190 SL, or W121. How's that for legend? "Yeah, I made the 300 SL Gullwing happen. Yeah, I live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. What of it?" __Above:__ An early 300 SL in motion. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Here's the kicker: The Daimler-Benz board OK'd the SL design and production process, but signed off on a catch — the two cars had to debut at the 1954 New York auto show, six months away. *Six months.* What have you done in the last six months? I cleaned out my closet and did laundry a few times. Sort of. Production came late in 1954. Contrary to popular belief, the showroom 300 SL wasn't a W194 you could park in your garage. The W198's tubular chassis and 220-horsepower 3.0-liter six were inspired by the 194, but several key features were different. The 2,855-pound car's body was largely steel, with aluminum doors, hood and trunk lid. An aluminum body was offered as an option, but it was so outlandishly expensive that just 29 customers ordered it over three years. It saved 176 pounds. A four-speed manual gearbox was standard. The engine, canted at a 45-degree angle to allow for a low hoodline, used Bosch direct-mechanical fuel injection and a dry sump. The gullwing doors with fixed windows were retained, as was a monstrous oil cooler and a barrel-sized oil tank. You can see the tank in this picture: It's the round black thing with the yellowish cap near the base of the windshield. If you look carefully, you can also spot a handful of frame tubes poking up to a tie point behind the engine. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Let's take a closer look at that engine. The 300 SL's six-cylinder was enormous, like a couple of kitchen stoves joined at the hip. Its main technical curiosities — the dry sump, with its 2.6-gallon(!) external oil tank, and direct fuel injection (an evolution of the system used on Mercedes diesels) — were born of racing needs. Other than that, it was basically a tweaked and massaged version of the engine found in Stuttgart's 300 (W186) passenger sedan. But oh, what a massage. The SL was the first production car to use direct fuel injection — it injected gasoline directly into its cylinders, not the intake ports or throttle bodies. This is technology major manufacturers are only now, more than 50 years later, widely adopting. The benefit is a more efficient burn and greater power across the rev range. The system was completely mechanical. An engine-driven pump used a series of plungers and a calibrated linkage to vary fuel delivery with engine speed. It compensated for both altitude and temperature, injected fuel at between 568 and 682 psi and was essentially maintenance-free, even by modern standards. The result was an engine that pulled like crazy and was docile as a house cat. Although low-speed acceleration (zero to 100 km/hour, or 62 mph, in 10 seconds) is mediocre by modern standards, the rush and top speed (146 to 160 mph, depending on axle ratio) were mind-blowing for its day. In short, genius. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Still, the Gullwing wasn't without its quirks. Chief among them: - Because the fuel pump was driven by the engine and did not have an ignition cutout, it kept injecting fuel until the engine was turned off and stopped rotating. That fuel wasn't burned and tended to flow into the engine's sump, diluting the oil. This means changing the oil regularly — most SL gurus agree on 1,000 miles or so. Skimping on oil changes risks serious premature engine wear. - The oiling system, with its 2.6-gallon capacity and industrial-strength oil cooler, was designed for racing and extended high-speed running. As a result, most people rarely got the oil up to temperature — 2.6 gallons takes a *long* time to warm up, especially when it's being constantly cooled down by an enormous, competition-spec heat exchanger. For this reason, the aforementioned run-down gasoline often did not evaporate out of the oil, which meant you had to change the oil regularly or ... well, see above. __Above:__ The SL's injection pump, hanging off the engine beneath spark-plug leads and beside the steering column. Each fuel line leads to a cylinder. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com.*
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More quirks: - The owner's manual features a host of precautions, all of which were written in a "*NEIN!* DO NOT do this! IMMINENT DEATH results!" translated-from-German tone. Example: To stop, *"turn the ignition key to the left while idling. Do not on any account try to stop the engine at a higher speed."* Because of, you know, that whole excess-fuel-in-the-oil thing. - Extended high-speed running required using a driver-activated auxiliary fuel pump, which was sometimes but not always required for cold starts, and you could misuse it during starting. That could lead to engine flooding, and that would lead to oil in the sump. Again: fuel, oil, bad. __Above:__ The Gullwing's cockpit. Note the remarkable level of finish and frame tube (the booted black thing) poking out of each footwell. Packaging and crash safety meets 1950s Germany, 1950s Germany wins. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Quirks, still: - Because the SL's doors were shallow and curvy, the windows didn't retract. They were removable, but doing so took effort. There was no air-conditioning. and ventilation was almost nonexistent. Gullwing owners tended to sweat a lot and drive around with the doors up. - Because the SL's sills were high and wide, its steering wheel large and its seats deep and recessed, getting in or out wasn't easy. The steering wheel pivoted forward at its hub to make things a bit easier, but you're still cramming yourself into a tight-fitting suit. What's more, anyone under 5-foot-9 or so can't reach the doors to close them while seated. <il>The trunk, while cavernous, was mostly filled with spare tire.</il> __Above:__ And so we come to the 300 SL roadster (W198 II), produced from 1957 to 1963. It replaced the Gullwing coupe but was essentially the same car with real doors, a redesigned nose, a real trunk, a slightly more comfortable interior, windows that rolled down and a redesigned rear suspension. More on that in a moment. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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One more quirk: Because the Gullwing sported a sedan-derived rear swing axle — a heavy arrangement prone to rapid camber change and a positive-camber droop phenomenon known as "wheel tuck" — it handled funny. Not bad funny, but *funny* funny. Big changes in throttle or suspension loading (in other words, ham-fisted driving) tended to unsettle the rear axle and pitch the car sideways. It wasn't always easy to recover. A [period road test in *Sports Cars Illustrated*](http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/archive/mercedes-benz_300sl-archived_road_test/tricks_to_driving_the_car_page_2) described proper cornering thusly: > "At this point I asked Leutge to demonstrate proper fast-cornering technique with the 300 SL and he took the wheel.... All the way around the curve he maintained neutral acceleration, just patting the throttle lightly and occasionally to keep his velocity constant. As the curve began to straighten out he stomped the throttle to the floorboards, rocketing into the straight. Further checking with men who have driven 300 SL's in competition verified this as the one-and-only technique for keeping out of trouble during high-speed cornering. With this car you do not horse around with throttle steering." Two crazy doors and one technique for hauling ass without ending up in the weeds. Glorious. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Naturally, the SL roadster also was the result of Max Hoffman's griping. He lobbied hard, convinced Americans would buy a roofless Gullwing. He was right: Mercedes sold 1,858 roadsters between 1957 and '63 compared to 1,400 coupes between '54 and '57. Granted, much of that had to do with Mercedes' proliferation — the company was smaller and less established in America in the late 1950s than it was in the early 1960s — but still, the point was made. There were noticeable improvements with the roadster. Instead of the coupe's dual-joint, high-pivot rear swing axle, the roadster got a single-joint, low-pivot unit from the 220 (W180) sedan. It was less complex and less prone to, you know, killing you. The interior was updated, the fold-away steering wheel was axed and the windows opened. Weight rose 165 pounds because using "normal" doors required relocating frame tubes and stiffening the chassis to compensate. In short, the roadster was as ordinary as the Gullwing was extraordinary. Yes, that's right: The Gullwing had gullwing doors because its engineers *wanted to save 165 pounds.* Modern cars give you an extra 165 pounds when you order power seats. Bleh. __Above:__ You can't do this with a roadster. Note the grin on driver/photo assistant's face. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Starting one of these suckers is like firing up the boilers on the *Titanic*, or maybe gearing a small country up for war. You check the oil. You turn the key. You listen to the fuel pump, then you test the auxiliary fuel pump and listen to that. You check the oil again, because you know how much it costs to tear one of these things down and rebuild it, and that number would buy you a very nice, very new Mercedes-Benz sedan. Only then do you try starting it. If the car's been sitting a long time, you leave the aux pump running, as it sometimes helps. None of the switches or sliders on the dash are labeled. You turn the key — the starter! It turns with a key, just like a normal car! Foot off the throttle — fuel-injection magic! There's a slow, steady *rowrowr*, momentary pause, *rowrowr*, momentary pause, *rowr.* And nothing happens. __Above:__ The cockpit of a Gullwing at speed. It's not quite as claustrophobic as it looks. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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You try again. *Rowr.* A third time. *Rowr.* Maybe you smell gas, maybe you don't, but you wait, because you can't flood it. Flooding things is bad. It means the car won't start for at least 10 minutes. It means you are the kind of rube who gropes a woman at the dinner table on the first date. Bad form. You sit there a little, waiting, and play with the shift lever. It's a foot long and chrome and has a mushroom-shaped cream-colored knob on top. It carries the same kind of heft you get from the latch on a walk-in freezer — big, with a long throw, and when it clicks into place, you can feel it in your toes. Wandlike, and oddly heavy. The headlight switch is the same, but in miniature. Everything in the cockpit, even the ashtray, goes *chunk* when you use it. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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If an SL lights quickly from cold, you become convinced you're a genius and the car is perfectly healthy. If an SL fails to light from cold, or takes a long time, you contemplate whatever the Germans call *hara-kiri* (falling on your ... oil tank?) and never leaving the house again. This car makes you feel things like few others do. Not always good things, but things nonetheless. And then it fires. There are a lot of undramatic things on this earth, but cold-starting a 300 SL is not one of them. A plume of condensation billows out the exhaust. The car rumbles, but gently, and you don't feel any vibration in the cockpit. If you don't listen to it, it just washes into the background, all bass and subdued whir. If you pay attention, you can pull separate movements out of the whole — the clattery tumble of valves here, the whine of an accessory drive there, the God's Washing Machine basso repeat that emanates, ever so silently, from the bottom of the crankcase. As supercar engines go, the SL's mill is a quiet one, but you can tell there's a lot going on. __Above:__ The Gullwing's roof vents, designed to help exhaust air from the cockpit and provide a modicum of flow-through ventilation. They work. Sort of. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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There are a lot of weird things about driving a Gullwing. First off, you get to tool around with the doors up — they make this amazing and fabulous *Back to the Future* hiss as they rise or close — which blows the minds of just about everyone in traffic. You feel like a Grade-A fossil-fuel pimp, the kind of guy who gets things *done.* I felt like this in one other car, and only once, and that car [cost a million dollars and was kind of ugly](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/2007/09/lamborghini-rev/). But I digress. Still, that feeling isn't the best part about driving a Gullwing in traffic. The best part about driving a Gullwing in traffic is what you get from other people. Most people have no idea what it is, and they don't care. You can see it in their eyes, in the way they look past the car's beautifully arched fenders without lingering. But the people who get it? Well, they *Get It*. One in, say, every 50 drivers goes unhinged, swerving through traffic mouthing "Gullllllllwinnnnnnng" and gaping. Triple-takes happen. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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There are other things: You're hot as hell, for one. On a 60-degree day, the heat pumping out from the engine and exhaust gets cooped up under the doors and keeps you toasty. On an 80-degree day, you consider punching out the windshield and driving shirtless. The cockpit is impeccably assembled, covered in drum-tight leather so form-fitting it might as well be painted on. Thanks to the high, wide door sills, the footwells seem a mile deep. The seats are high but comfortable and the wheel a bit close. You end up driving elbows out, legs extended, like you're riding some classy German farm tractor. A farm tractor that will pull cleanly from 10 mph to its triple-digit top speed in fourth gear. Yes, I just called one of the greatest cars ever built a farm tractor. It doesn't matter. Look at those doors! *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Yes, you can hang out of the car, belted in, while it's moving. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. Yes, the sound is better from the outside. Words come to mind: Indomitable. Unstoppable. *Reichian*. It's loud as hell. You tingle with the buzz of industrial triumph. And you say things like "industrial triumph" with a straight face. Here, listen. And turn it up: <script language="JavaScript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js" type="text/javascript"></script><object class="BrightcoveExperience" id="myExperience754293317001"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"></param><param name="width" value="650"></param><param name="height" value="630"></param><param name="playerID" value="74416392001"></param><param name="publisherID" value="1564549380"></param><param name="isVid" value="true"></param><param name="isUI" value="true"></param><param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true"></param><param name="@videoPlayer" value="754293317001"></param><param name="videoID" value="754293317001"></param></object><script type="text/javascript"> runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience754293317001', 'anId'); </script><script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> It's real, it's ridiculous, it's filled with drama and as in-your-face as a subdued piece of German technical might can be. The exhaust? A deeply hollow, stainless bark. The fuel-injection? Hundreds of tiny men with tiny hammers in the world's largest echo chamber. Most supercars — [Lamborghinis](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/lamborghini/), [Ferraris](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/tag/ferrari/), what have you, from the 1950s to the present — are as ostentatious and insecure as they are impractical. The Gullwing is calm, confident excellence. It bends into corners with a determined, burnished poise and heft, swallowing pavement in leaps and bounds and unstoppable, Rommel-through-the-desert charges. And it wants to help you take over the world. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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__Above:__ This is the support strut and cast-aluminum hinge of our test Gullwing's passenger door. This part of the photo shoot took place in a city park in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. A few teenagers walked up while I was changing cards in the camera. One of them — the kid with his pants the lowest, and with an out-of-it look on his face — eyed the car up and down, stepped back, and said, "Whoaaaaa! A fuckin' Gullwing!" This car is more than 50 years old, folks. Most people don't know what a '54 Chevrolet looks like, but they know a Gullwing. There's a lesson there. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
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Predictably, owning this kind of glory isn't cheap. A run-of-the-mill Gullwing in decent shape with no history of competition or celebrity ownership will cost you around half-a-million dollars, give or take the price of a new S-Class. Roadsters are slightly cheaper. Even though they're arguably more pleasant to drive, they don't carry as much cachet. They're more readily available, but really, who doesn't want those doors? It doesn't stop with the purchase, either. [Parts are readily available,](http://www.mercedes-benz-classic.com/content/classic/mpc/mpc_classic_website/en/mpc_home/mbc/home/classic/classic_center_usa.html) but if you're swimming in this pool, know that it's deep. The SL's monster aluminum brake drums are $2,000 each. A full brake job with drums, flexible rubber lines, wheel cylinders and shoes, is $14,000 for the parts alone. A gearbox rebuild costs $35,000. Tires? Those are cheap — the Michelin XWX radial, at $500 a pop, is generally considered the best choice. If you get a flat, you don't have to pawn your kidneys. That only comes when you pop a transmission. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech21mercedes-benz-300-sl-gullwing-5
In the end, though, there are a lot of pretty cars out there. There are a lot of pretty cars that sound great, even. The SL's charm comes from how it goes about its job. It does everything, and I mean *everything*, perfectly. Oh, there are flaws. The brakes are a little wooden. The steering is slow. The roadster is a little cramped, and the Gullwing — well, we've talked about what's wrong with the Gullwing. But the SL's flaws are products of the era in which it was built. Most cars of the time had wooden brakes and slow steering gear, for example. It doesn't take away from the whole. The perfection comes in how the SL lives up to its hype. There are a few notable lumps, but this is essentially a modern car that happens to be half-a-century old. It's relatively fast. It doesn't ask for a lot in maintenance. It's quiet and comfortable on the highway, and it'll hustle down a back road all day long with the tach wound out and the engine screaming. (It's not so much a scream, really, just a roar that increases in volume and determination. But I digress.) Highway speeds feel like you could get out and walk. Bear in mind Mercedes accomplished this at a time when the average family Ford struggled to top 90 mph and felt like it was going to fall apart in the process. To top it off, the SL oozes personality, class and an inescapable, utterly unreproducible sense of historical place. No wonder everyone wants one. The [Gullwing Register](http://www.mercedes300slregister.com/) is mostly comprised of older individuals, people who have owned their cars for years and refuse to sell them. Many owners work on the cars themselves, and most 300 SLs have extensive mileage. These cars are unique among valuable classics in that they regularly have the piss driven out of them. Which, all things considered, only makes sense. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com*
An Aereo antenna. Photo: Aereo22mercedes-benz-300-sl-gullwing-8
__Above:__ Traffic and a sense of scale. Modern cars are huge, and their doors are too damn normal. *Photo: Sam Smith/Wired.com* *Wired.com thanks [Indigo Classic Cars](http://www.indigoclassiccars.com/) for lending us these SLs. And thank you to Todd Blue, D. and A. Smith, and Ben Thongsai for their help making this story happen.*
