Silver Rocket - 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SLR (W196S) "Uhlenhaut Coupe"

Back in the beginning of the 1950s, Mercedes-Benz, who managed to get back up on its legs quite fast after the end of World War II, was still quite weak, after the difficulties of WWII, and wanted quickly to get their pre-war glory back.

In 1952, they managed to get a lot of victories with the 300 SL (W194) -which was not very powerful, but pretty light- including the 24 hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamerica, Bern-Bremgarten, etc..

They were sucessful in Formula One, with the famous Mercedes-Benz W196R Formula one car, driven by Juan Manuel Fangio in the shortened 1955 F1 championship and in the 1954 F1 championship, and winning most of the races, but not only.

They were also successful in touring/endurance, dominating the 1952 World Sportscars Championship with the 300SL (W194), getting to win the 24h of Le Mans, Bern-Bremgarten and the Carrera Panamerica, to name three, and by the way, also dominating the 1955 World Sportscars Championship with the 300 SLR (W196S) by winning the Targa Florio or the Mille Miglia, to only name these.

All of this helped, of course, sales of the road-going 1954 300SL (W198), which was based on the 300SL (W194) race car. After a while, however, the W194 chassis would become obsolete, and the replacement was the 300 SLR (W196S). It wasn’t based on either the 300SL (W194) race car or the 300SL (W198) road car, but on the W196 Formula One car. Of course, with the success known by the original W196, the 300 SLR was promised to a great career.

However, the career of the 300 SLR (W196S) would not be as great or marvelous as its designer, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who also designed the 300SL (W194), the 300SL (W198) and the W196, would think.

It indeed did start with honors, missing the two first races, the 1000 km of Buenos Aires and 12 hours of Sebring, but winning the Mille Miglia for its first race with the famous results we know, scoring first place with Moss’ legendary 300 SLR #722, and scoring second place with Fangio’s 300 SLR #658.

However, all hell broke loose during the fourth race, the 24 hours of Le Mans. The sadly remembered 1955 edition of the race. It started well, though. The German team paired its two best drivers, Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, in the leading car; Karl Kling, winner of the 1952 edition, and André Simon, in the second car; and finally John Fitch and Pierre Levegh, in the third and last car. They managed to take a solid position, with Fangio/Moss in 1st place and Kling/Simon in 3rd place, Fitch/Levegh being in 6th place.

On lap 35, however, the worst happened. Levegh, going over 200 km/h and almost lapped by Fangio -who was closely following-, rear-ended Lance Macklin’s Austin-Healey 100S, himself trying to avoid Mike Hawthorn’s Jaguar D-Type. In fact, Hawthorn did cut Macklin, while trying to go to the pits, which made Macklin’s Austin-Healey swerve left in the path of Levegh’s Mercedes. The latter then saw his 300 SLR being lauched into the air, before crashing right in front of spectators all while launching components of the car, like the engine, the transmission or the suspension, along with other debris, right in the stands, all of this happening as the fuel tank exploded when the car crashed.

Of course, the car then ignited like a spark and started to burn heavily, partly because of the magnesium body of the car, a racing technology which was latter dropped as many pilots were burned alive and died in their cars, which were often ignited by spilled fuel after a crash. It was pure and utter carnage. 82 people were killed, including Levegh, and over 120 injured.

The race, surprisingly, did not stop, but Mercedes called the two left 300 SLRs back to the stands in the middle of the night, loaded the cars in the team’s trucks, and quietly did quit the race, and the circuit, in the dark of the night.

Mercedes still finished the 1955 World Sportscars Championship, adding the RAC Tourist Trophy to their victories, the 300 SLR (W196S) winning the race in Moss’ hands, as well as finishing second and third - effectively filling the podium -, and winning the Targa Florio as well, making a double for the team - as Mercedes also got a 300 SLR in second place.

As the Carrera Panamerica was cancelled, due to the Le Mans disaster, Mercedes-Benz won the 1955 World Sportscar Championship, effectively beating Ferrari by two points, and subsequently retired from motorsport altogether, not coming back or engaging any factory cars until 1989.

That’s where Uhlenhaut comes back in the story. The thing is, nine 300 SLRs were built, but Mercedes was planning something for 1956, a hardtop version of the 300 SLR (W196S), and two units were taken in order to be modified to become a hybrid between the 300SL (W198) and the 300 SLR (W196S).

However, with Mercedes’ decision of quitting motorsports, they were seemed a bit as useless. They were effectively road-legal, developped 302 hp and weighted about 1117 kg, for a top speed of approximately 284 km/h.

One of them was used by Rudolf Uhlenhaut as a company car, since the car wasn’t going to be used for racing anyway, and there’s an interesting legend related to it.

Uhlenhaut was apparently late for a meeting in Munich, and the little problem was that he was in Stuttgart, which is approximately at 2 1/2 hours of car, or around 200 km from Munich. He climbed into the 300 SLR which would later be named after him, and did the damn 200 km journey in one, yes, one hour.

Powered by a three liter (or 2 982 cc, for those who like precise numbers) inline-eight, developping 302 hp (according to Mercedes-Benz) at 7400 rpm, and 317 nm/233 lbs-ft of torque at 5950 rpm, but weighting only 1 117 kg, it was a true beast.

These numbers might seem rather banal today, but try to find a new car having a curb weight of 1 110 kg and developping 300 hp today. You’ll only find small higher-end driver’s cars, most of the time turbocharged. This, was in 1955. It was the fastest road car in the world at that time.

Interestingly, it was tested only once by any kind of outsider back when it was relevant, meaning not someone from M-B, and it was in 1956, near Munich, on a stretch of an Autobahn which was closed for the occasion. Who were the testers? People from the Swiss magazine Automobil Revue, yes, a magazine from a country who actually banned any type of motorsports after the Le Mans disaster.

What did they said about it?

“A touch on the starter sets the engine going with a stupefying noise…a general indescribable hammer and boom, magnified by the closed coachwork. Ear plugs are obligatory.”

And their conclusion about the 300 SLR hardtop?

“This is a motorcar which we will never be able to buy and which the average driver would never buy anyway.”

Their comment about hear plugs was quite right, actually. There was no sound-supressing tech and mufflers were absent from the car. In fact, employees who worked at that time for Rudolf Uhlenhaut reported that he sometime did take the 300 SLR home, and that when he would come back the next morning, they could hear him returning when he was 5 km away from there. And guess what Uhlenhaut needed later in his life? Yeah, hearing aids.

However, on the 300 SLR hardtop he used, he had to install a big silencer on the side to be able to drive it on the road, as the car was not equiped with any muffler. It was later removed by the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

The car was known to be highly uncomfortable for any inoccupants who would climb into it. The driver would climb over the extremely large and excessively high door sill, then try to squeeze himself into the seat and get his legs in place, a task made quite difficult with the lack of space and the large steering wheel.

Once in place, he would have the propshaft between his legs, as the differential was between the fourth and fifth cylinder, and there would be the large steering wheel which would get between his knees. Highly uncomfortable for anyone, but all I can imagine is it being pure hell for any tall person (I’m only 5’6”, or 168 cm), and Clarkson’s worst nightmare. Martin Gentischer, an employee from the Mercedes-Benz Museum, described it as “feeling a bit like on a Harley-Davidson on four wheels”.

But that’s not all. Like with the regular 300 SLR (W196S) race car, there was a second seat for a passenger. The W196S race car, however, was an open-top, unlike the 300 SLR hardtop. You would have to share the tiny cockpit with a passenger, and that’s if you could ever convince someone to be your passenger.

The potential passenger would get a door sill being as enormous, and even though he would not have any steering wheel or propshaft in his way, he would have to deal with an even tinier seat, as well as some sheet of metal on the left of his seat, probably for providing lateral support. Anyone being slightly fat would be stuck between the high door sill and the metal separation serving as lateral support, and would get as well another metal separation, this time on the floor, for legs.

In fact, the interior of a regular 300SL Gullwing (W198) looks like pure heaven compared to this. No propshaft, no side separation, only some center console and high door sill, problem caused by the metal skeleton, the space frame designed originally by Uhlenhaut for the 300SL (W194) race car, who enveloped the whole passenger compartment, making regular doors impossible to install, and thus requiring what made the 300SL (W198) coupe -and by derivation the 300SLR hardtop- legendary: gullwing doors, with the door hinges on the roof.

The 300SL (W198) Roadster, who couldn’t have gullwing doors, for obvious reasons, had regular doors, and thus needed a slight redesign of the frame there, explaining the drastic weight difference between the roadster and the coupe.

The Uhlenhaut Coupe, however, had the main difference on a 300SL (W198) of having an inline-eight engine, the M196 S, as opposed to the inline-six engine of the 300SL.

It was seen as quite a wonderful piece of engineering, being a race-designed engine: 302 hp for three liters, giving a very good power/liter ratio of 104 hp/liter (and this is a mid-1950s naturally aspirated engine), direct fuel injection, DOHC and 16 valves, two per cylinder, all this but with a very limited window of optimal exploitation of the power, redline being at 7800 rpm but maximal power being delivered at 7400 rpm. Power was delivered to the rear wheels with a 5-speed manual gearbox.

This engine was placed in two cars, as two Uhlenhaut coupes were built. It is highly difficult to get specific information for each car, but the first one was built with a blue interior, while the second one was built with a red interior.

The blue interior hardtop was apparently the very one used by Rudolf Uhlenhaut, which required some modifications to it.

He had, for example, to install a big silencer on the right side of the blue interior one by consideration for neighbors and people’s ears in general, as the car was designed without any silencer, which means it was originally with straight pipes.

Like mentionned earlier, the silencer was later removed from the car by the Mercedes-Benz Museum. It also had (and still apparently has) a wind deflector installed on the bonnet, and was equiped with a front grille on which the Mercedes-Benz badge was installed.

The blue interior 300 SLR hardtop is actually being exposed permanantly in the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Very few pictures of it are available, except from the same ones showing it in the M-B Museum, and I only managed to find two pictures of it outside the museum, and they were also the only pictures I did find of it while it was still being equiped with the side silencer.

The red interior 300 SLR hardtop, however, did not receive the same treatment. It never received any silencer, and thus always stayed straight-piped, and it does not feature the wind deflector present on the blue interior hardtop. It also seems like it was equiped with a regular Mercedes-Benz chrome badge, almost the same to the one of the 300SL (W198), rather than a grille, but it seems like the badge was slightly curved to fit the calender of the 300 SLR.

Almost every available picture showing a 300 SLR hardtop Uhlenhaut Coupe is showing the red interior car, and it seems like it is the red interior hardtop, rather than the blue interior one, which is being used for special events and being exposed outside of the museum, and also the one being driven, rather than the blue interior car, which stays nice & safe in the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

On the question of price, however, there is no answer. It is often said that the Uhlenhaut Coupe is the most valuable car of the world, but that’s wrong. The reason behind it is simple: none of the two Uhlenhaut coupes made has ever been sold, or been for sale.

That does not mean there hasn’t been offers for buying one, but Mercedes-Benz always refused every single offer to buy one. Since they have both been built, in 1955, there hasn’t been a single moment where any of the two Uhlenhaut Coupes was owned by anyone else other than Mercedes-Benz. It can’t be the most valuable car in the world, because it never had a price in first place.

And that, people, makes the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S) hardtop “Uhlenhaut Coupe” priceless.

After 2 1/2 hours of editing, 9-10 hours of actual writing and countless hours of research, here it is! First #blogpost I’ve done yet. Hope you’ll have enjoyed to read it as much as I enjoyed to write it. Feel free to tell me in the comments any amelioration I could do, or correction I could bring, as it’s my first try to it. Next blog post will be most likely about a certain Beetle.

See you next time!