Creators Podcast
The Mercedes Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe
Episode #20
04.13.2025
“Watching him go and listening to the exhaust note as he changed gears up and down in the distance, Arthur Kessler, (the Daimler-Benz press chief) exclaimed, “Did you ever see anyone so happy at his work? He’s a toy maker, delighted to find people interested in his latest creation.”
And so what I’m reading here is a passage from an unbelievable review by an auto journalist, published back in 1956 and they wrote about the car that we’re going to be looking at today. The reason that I’m starting out with this review, it was something that just kept coming up over and over as I was learning about this car.
So I dug up the review and once I read it, it was really clear why so many people had been referencing this review over the years. So let’s keep going here. Here’s the very next line of that review. It says,
“And this was truly the most fabulous toy of all. The fastest car on the road anywhere in the world today. No one can possibly say how much it costs. And it is definitely not for sale. So there it is.”
That’s the teaser right there. And I’m always trying to start these episodes off with the big moment when the legend is born.
And so with this car, it was amazing to discover that my big moment that just seemed so clear when I was done learning about this car for a week, it was when the public finally got to experience this car for the very first time and a few auto journalists were given access to this car. And what they found was it was just simply like nothing else that’s ever been built.
So that to me was the big moment for this car. And it was in 1956. And they were able to put this car through a bunch of different tests. And then they wrote this review about the car. But before we get into that, we’re first going to look at the force of nature behind the car. And there’s always a force of nature behind these awesome, historic and epic cars. The creator of one of the most amazing and valuable cars of all time. And that was Rudolf Uhlenhaut.
And the car that he and his team created back in 1955, it was the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe. So it turns out, and I didn’t even know this until I read an entire book on Rudolf Uhlenhaut this past week, but he was one of the key figures at Mercedes-Benz for over 40 years, from 1931 to 1972. So his amazing career in the racing department,
And then in the passenger vehicle test department, it spanned this huge part of the Mercedes Benz incredible history. And what I just read from that car review, it was the auto journalist Gordon Wilkins. He was able to test drive the Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe back in 1956. So with another auto journalist, the two of them put this car through a series of very rigorous tests.
They drove it over 2000 miles all over Germany and Italy and then into the Swiss Alps. And then Gordon Wilkins wrote this insane article, this complete review about his experiences and his time that he spent with this car. And so that entire review is just amazing. So I wanted to read the opening excerpt from Gordon Wilkins right from his review because it captures something really important about the force behind the car.
the man whose name is attached to it. And so this is how he describes it. There’s a group of journalists standing around on the side of the road and they’re waiting for something. They’re standing there with the press chief from Mercedes, this guy, Arthur Kesser. And Kesser says to the group, says, did you ever see anyone so happy at his work? And he follows that up with this amazing line. He says, quote, he’s a toy maker, delighted to find people.
interested in his latest creation. And of course, Kessler, the Mercedes press chief, he’s talking about Rudolf Uhlenhaut and what they’re all waiting for on the side of the road. They’re waiting for their turn to get a ride in this car, the 300 SLR. And of course then as they’re waiting, here comes the car. And here’s how Gordon Wilkins describes it. He says, quote,
Occasionally the silence was shattered as a long, low silver projectile hurtled towards us at 100 miles per hour and then stopped a few yards away as though restrained by some supernatural force, no ordinary brakes could ever stop a car like that. The gullwing doors would open up. A passenger
Dazed with noise, speed, and acceleration such as he had never before experienced, would climb out over the high side. Another would step in, and Rudolf Uhlenhaut, director of the Daimler-Benz Experimental Department, would drive off, smiling happily on another demonstration run.” End of quote right there. So we have an amazing review written by an auto journalist who
got to put over 2000 miles on this car back in 1956, just a few months after the thing was built. And we’ll get into that review in a little bit. But then we have the man himself, the toy maker, as he was just called, Rudolf Uhlenhaut. He wasn’t just a super talented engineer at Mercedes. He had something really, really special. He had a unique blend of qualities that we’re going to take a look at.
Because you don’t just end up with your last name on the most valuable and historic Mercedes car to ever be built. And you gotta stand out and you gotta bring something to the table that nobody else has. So what was so special about this guy? I needed to figure that out. And so I have a book here in front of me that’s dedicated to his entire life story. The book is titled Rudolph Ullinhart, Engineer and Gentleman, written by Wolfgang Scheller and Thomas Pollack.
And this book was first published in German back in 2015. So what really helps us understand an icon like this, who spent 40 years at Mercedes designing cars is we need to understand where they started out. Like where are they coming from? So Jung Uhlenhout studies mechanical engineering in Munich, and then he lands a series of internships in the late 1920s. After graduation, he’s ready to find a full-time job, but now it’s 1931.
And the Great Depression is hitting Germany and pretty much everywhere else in the world. So it’s tough. The job market is just in the tank. There’s a 30 % unemployment rate at the time. But one of the early lucky breaks that Ullenhout catches here through a connection of his father’s, he gets hired at Daimler-Benz. And he was one of the very few new hires at Daimler-Benz during this time during the depression.
So he starts out as a technical assistant in the test department, but quickly climbs the ladder and in just a couple years, he works his way up to lead the newly created racing department in 1936 as a senior engineer. Now by the late 1930s, Germany’s making massive investments in motor racing through Mercedes and then also through Auto Union, which was a group of four other German automakers.
There’s a huge push into racing right now and Uhlenhaut’s right in the middle of it at Mercedes. But it wouldn’t be long. World War II breaks out and all racing comes to a stop. Uhlenhaut’s moved into a research engineering role for aircraft engines and parts for the war effort. So the Mercedes-Benz plant is actually bombed and he’s moved out of Stuttgart to a safer location. So the book goes into detail on these years of World War II in a
Bunch of different stories where Uhlenhaut is just trying to survive as an engineer doing his work, but then also making it through the end of the war and then trying to get back to work at Mercedes and then start to rebuild after the war. But you can imagine, this is a really tough time, trying to get the economy going again in Germany and rebuilding bombed out factories and then there were investigations about any role that anyone might have played for the German army during the war.
So all this takes several years all the way to 1948 when Uhlenhaut’s able to join Daimler-Benz again as a test engineer back in Stuttgart. And then he quickly becomes head of the test department. So not long after we have the big board meeting here at Daimler-Benz and this board meeting takes place in 1951. The board makes the big decision to get back into racing and to build a new race car. And this decision lands directly on the development team.
the department that Uhlenhaut heads up. It turns out Uhlenhaut had already been thinking about a sports car for several years and once this board meeting takes place in 1951, it’s not long after that that they have the very beginning of the Mercedes 300 SL model. Now they’re racing. The 1952 racing season shows that Uhlenhaut had a great design and the 300 SL wins four races.
Over the next few years there’s a few design changes until they build the W196R version and then in 1954 Juan Manuel Fangio wins the Formula One World Championship in this car. Now I have to stop right here. Anytime Fangio makes a guest appearance in one of my episodes I have to stop. If you’re talking about car racing there’s no getting around Fangio. He pops up in almost every imp-
important biography of the great car makers. It’s amazing. He pops up in the Enzo Ferrari story because he was a driver for Ferrari for a period of time. Then Mercedes. He plays a huge part in the company over many, many decades. He even pops up in the Horatio Pagani story and my episode I did on Pagani. If you ever wonder why Horatio Pagani talks about Juan Manuel Fangio in almost every interview he’s ever done.
Just listen to my episode on Pagani and you’ll understand the importance of Fangio. A true racing legend. Anyway, that’s Fangio and he just wins a big race for Mercedes in 1954. They start their racing program in just a few years and they’re winning races with these amazing cars from Uhlenhaut’s engineering department. After Fangio’s big win in 1954, they take the next step and develop the 300 SLRs that would win and set
records at the Milli Miglia with sterling moss behind the wheel and then they go on to win the Targa Florio these are big victories for Mercedes now they’re winning with the open top cars but they have an idea to enclose the cabin for these longer endurance races to try to protect the driver a little bit if you’ve seen the photo there’s a historic photo of sterling moss after his big victory you’ll understand exactly what i’m talking about here he has this
thick layer of dirt around his face and you can see he’s completely covered in mud and dirt because of the dirt lines around his eyes once he pulls his goggles off. I mean the guy is just covered in dirt from these races. So right after these victories they decide to develop the coupe version. What would become the Uhlenhaut Coupe? These would have the enclosed cabin with the iconic gullwing doors.
Now you would think the drivers would be all for this idea to enclose the cabin and protect them a little bit, but they actually push back on this idea. It’s because enclosing the car on these long endurance races, it just drove the drivers crazy. And they found this out from an earlier version from the 300 SL models, but they hated this idea. The engine was unbelievably loud inside this cabin.
There was no ventilation and the heat and exhaust from the engine was just pumping straight back into the cabin. It was just miserable for the drivers. So with this initial pushback from the drivers, these two versions of the 300 SLR with the fully enclosed cabin, which they called the coupe version, these two cars were kind of delayed and they were not completed until later in 1955. So one of these cars had blue interior and the other had red.
These were the only two cars built with the enclosed cabin. There was a rumor that they were registered to compete in the 1955 Carrera Panamericana race, but then in that same year of 1955, there’s a terrible crash at Le Mans and dozens of spectators are killed. And it’s just a horrific crash. The worst ever crash at Le Mans right here in this 1955 season. So this Carrera race is canceled.
Now it’s late 1955 and we have these two amazing SLR coupe race cars built, one with the blue interior, the other with red, but they never hit the track. At the end of the 1955 season, Mercedes as a company, make the big decision to exit competitive racing and they would be completely out of racing for several years after that. Now,
One of the main reasons Mercedes ends the racing program is to focus on building new passenger cars. So guess who’s right there ready to dive into this development and testing? It’s Rudolf Uhlenhaut. Now luckily, as the head of this division, Uhlenhaut needs a reliable car to drive while he’s creating these new passenger cars. And what does he have right there? Two cars that never made it into the competitive races.
one with red interior, the other with blue, and he would drive these cars around the roads back and forth from his office to his house and to the test track and all over. He was using this car as his own personal vehicle while he’s designing these new 300 SLs, which would become the iconic Mercedes road cars. They’d sell over 1,400 of these cars with the gullwing doors.
And then another 1800 Roadster versions of these all the way up through 1963. So Uhlenhaut’s designing these new 300 SLs for Mercedes, but he’s using his new personal car while he’s doing it. So Uhlenhaut’s cruising around Germany in his 300 SLR coupe and everyone knew he was coming because they could hear him. The engine just roared and it became known pretty quickly as
the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe, because they could hear him coming. So there were only two of these cars. So he stood out anywhere he went, the roar of this engine, the original design, the fact that it was a race car with the coupe panels built over it. Everyone knew how amazing this car was even back then. And so his name just stuck to it from this day on because he’s actually using them as his
personal company cars. Now of course Rudolf Uhlenhaut is a legend, not just because he’s waking up all the neighbors with his coupe race car that he’s driving all around. They don’t name a car after you just for tearing around the neighborhood in a super fast car. They named the car after him because he was the force of nature behind the entire division of Mercedes. He shaped a company for decades, through racing and then through the passenger car departments.
But he was totally unique and not your average engineer. There’s so many amazing traits that are detailed in the book that I read. He had this amazing combination of skills. Like I said, not just a talented engineer, but he was also a brilliant test driver. He was known to jump into the race cars and record lap times that were faster than the drivers. There’s a famous story of when Juan Manuel Fangio
complain just a little bit about the car they were at the Nurburgring and what does he do? Uhlenhaut gets into the car and runs a lap time faster than Fangio. The legend. Then of course Uhlenhaut downplays the lap time and he doesn’t make a huge deal about it but that’s a famous story that everybody remembers. Beating Fangio’s time after listening to him try to say something’s not quite right with the car.
And then not only would he jump in and race the cars on the test track, but he’d also roll up his sleeves and get dirty trying to fix the cars and make adjustments to the cars. And that was not lost on the team. It was just not something that the head of a test department would normally do. So there’s a few reasons he did this. And in the book, it explains a lot about his thought process. He emphasized active personal involvement. He said, quote,
only active personal involvement can turn knowledge into skill and is the beginning of all learning.” quote. And that was from the book. says, one of the reasons that he pointed out was that a race car driver sometimes had a hard time articulating exactly what they experienced in the car. Where an engineer who could also test drive what he called active personal involvement,
They could gain insights that the drivers might not notice. And then this is where the iteration comes into play. was continuous improvement through testing. Just like the Porsche 917 episode I did a while back, iteration was the key to the Porsche 917. And you have to check out that episode, but it’s the same thing here. Uhlenhaut drove the cars over and over out on the test track so he could find deficiencies and remove them. That’s how the book describes it.
to find those deficiencies and remove them. And then his passion. And you can see this in all the other car episodes I’ve done, but this is a lifelong passion for Uhlenhaut. He’s working 12 hour days at least six days a week is what the book says he’s putting in those hours since his earliest days at Mercedes. It’s his life’s work that he’s dedicated to. Just like Carl Benz, Enzo Ferrari.
Horatio Pagani, Gordon Murray, all these episodes I’ve done so far. This is another common trait. It’s total dedication around the clock, 24-7, whatever it took to get the job done decade after decade. Ferdinand Piech with the Porsche 917, same thing. Total commitment and passion to build and create the very best car ever made.
Now I have to get to this review of the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe. This amazing review. So we already talked about it at the beginning of the episode. gave that teaser. It was this auto journalist, Gordon Wilkins, who tested the car. And then he wrote this extensive, unbelievable review. And it’s the descriptive writing is what makes this review so amazing. Reading this review makes you want to drive this car as you’re reading about it. So.
check this out. So if you remember from the opening excerpt that I read, there’s a group standing on the side of the road. They’re waiting for their turn to get a ride in this car. It’s 1956. So the car is less than a year old. And the Mercedes press chief, says, quote, Have you ever seen anyone so happy at his work? He’s a toy maker delighted to find people interested in his latest creation.
And that he of course, he’s talking about Uhlenhaut there. And we read that earlier, but this review, that’s just the start of this review. So it goes on and this review continues a few paragraphs later. It just says this, says quote, to ride in that 300 SLR with Uhlenhaut was a revelation. An object lesson in performance and how to use it. End of quote. That is insane. So now listen to this next line. He says,
He seemed to be doing 100 miles per hour wherever there were a few hundred yards of clear road, but he never took a chance and always seemed to be driving with almost exaggerated respect for other traffic.” End of quote. So Wilkins goes on to explain, even with all the testing that’s been done for racing, this car had never been put through an ordinary road test.
and that’s where this 2000 mile performance test comes in. So they hit the Autobahn and after German police closed down the Autobahn so they can capture all these official road speeds, they drive the car through snow, rain, they bring it into the mountains, into the Swiss Alps, through Italy. Wilkins is explaining the lengths they went through to get this car into every different condition so they could do their testing. So here’s a few takeaways, he says, quote,
It was by no means the first time we had collaborated on tests of fast cars, but the SLR opened up a new stratum of experience, not only in acceleration and speed, but in steering, braking, and road handling, and all the factors which allow high performance to be employed in safety.” of quote. Man, so I love that. He says the SLR opened up a new stratum
stratum of experience. And so he goes on, listen to this quote, here is a car that in the right conditions can touch 180 miles an hour on the road. A car that in a short space of 550 yards can accelerate from zero to 100 and break to a standstill again. A car that overtakes other vehicles and is back on its own side of the road again within two seconds. End of quote.
So now the review’s starting to catch my attention as I’m reading it for the first time. I’m starting to get an understanding of the giant leap in performance with this car. So Wilkins, the guy who’s doing all these tests, he already explained he said, it was by no means the first time we’ve run tests on fast cars. He just said that earlier. So he’s trying to say he knows what’s out there already. So he just spends most of the review trying to explain how much
better this car is than anything else he’s ever experienced. It’s pretty amazing. It reminds me a little bit of the McLaren F1 story that I did where it was just the best car anyone’s ever driven up to that point. So Wilkins continues his review. says this quote, the 300 SLR is a thoroughbred, but a tough one. So then he goes to write about all these crazy locations that they took the car. So listen to this.
quote, another day we took it roaring up over Switzerland’s Susten Pass. Next straining to the acceleration, twitching the wheel to hold it on traces of ice and melting snow. End of quote. So now they’re up in the Swiss Alps. He says, next straining to the acceleration. And that starts to get your adrenaline pumping right there. Just reading about it, driving this car up in the mountains on ice and snow.
You gotta be kidding me. But here’s what they found with this car. No problem. Listen to this quote, a single touch on the starter always set the engine going and we never had the slightest mechanical trouble. Fantastic acceleration without any trace of wheel spin permits safe passing in situations where you would never normally think of it between closely spaced mountain hairpins.
Second and third gears will take it flashing up over 70 miles per hour before slowing to a crawl under the action of its superb brakes for the next corner. And then this right here, quote, in fact, the initial acceleration is not staggeringly fast, but as the torque develops, the car bounds ahead, pressing driver and passengers hard against the backrests.
It is at about 35 miles per hour in first gear that maximum torque is felt, giving the car an acceleration approaching a half a G and subjecting the occupants to a sensation that is the reverse of normal braking. Okay, so all right, so then I continue reading this at review. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, here’s what Wilkins describes the gears. Check this out. He says, quote, in normal road driving,
first gear is not employed. The car starts easily in second. And in third gear it goes over 100 miles per hour without reaching the limit of 8,000 RPM, which can be utilized for short periods. It’s a rare cat in which you can go from 0 to 100 miles per hour without using more than two of the five ratios in the gearbox. And that sentence has an exclamation point at the end of it.
And there’s actually a lot of exclamation points in this review. It’s pretty funny. You just can’t help but get excited when you read through this. And then you can also kind of fuel Wilkins and his excitement for this car back in 1956. You can just try to imagine what he was trying to get across here. All right. So here’s one more passage. got to read this. He says, he keeps going. He says, quote, the engine is remarkably flexible and there is no need to shift.
continuously when not trying for maximum results. But if absolute optimum performance is the object, it is time to think of downshifting from fifth to fourth gear when the speed drops to 100 miles per hour. This puts maximum torque on tap, ready to exploit the slightest opportunity to take the car up from 100 to 120 miles per hour in 5.8 seconds.
And another exclamation point right there that that Wilkins adds. All right. So Wilkins is talking about downshifting from fifth gear down to fourth gear when the speed drops down to 100 and then taking the car back up from 100 to 120. Now, remember, this is 1956 when they’re doing these road tests. It was a different time. Cars just did not do this back then.
It was the fastest road car by far with a top speed of 180 miles per hour. So if you can imagine what they’re experiencing, I mean, it might as well been a spaceship that they’re in. There’s never been anything like this car in 1956 and they’re experiencing it for the first time. And so here’s one more quote. If the acceleration figures surpass anything recorded in any previous road test, the braking results are
equally outstanding. The unearing wheel grip and those enormous chassis mounted inboard brakes with their turbo cooling fence can be clapped on hard even at 100 miles per hour or without the slightest drama.” End of quote. love that describing the braking at 100 miles per hour without the slightest drama, which is what he said. That’s awesome. so, and then
There’s this, maybe my favorite passage of the whole review. It’s quote, steering is a little disconcerting at first. It is light and direct. It follows the slightest movements of the driver and transmits some road shock at low speeds. But at high speeds, the car almost seems to sense the wishes of the driver, even at 100 miles per hour in driving rain with a gale of wind blowing across the road.
End of quote. So the steering, just like everything else, he says disconcerting at first, but then of course at high speeds, the car just senses the wishes of the driver. Okay. So now this one right here might be my new favorite part of the review right here. Okay. So Wilkins says, quote, to use the amazing capabilities of the SLR on narrow winding and crowded European roads.
You must be in good physical shape with quick reactions and good eyesight. You also need a certain amount of physical endurance. The noise and in summer the heat, the continuous concentration and the unending acceleration, braking and gear shifting. For this is a car on which one never seems to be traveling at a steady speed. They all add up to a fair amount of effort.
But remember that this is simply a racing model, only partially adapted for road use.” End of quote. That’s insane. So Wilkins, again, he’s reminding us that this car was supposed to be used for racing. Mercedes withdraws from racing right after this car is created. So Wilkins is reminding us that this is not a car that lets you just sit back and relax. You have to be in good physical shape to drive it.
just like a race car driver. Okay, and it goes on here, quote, with practice, the enormous power of the 300 SLR proves to be fully usable. On highways, 100 to 120 miles per hour becomes cruising speed. And on ordinary roads, the average speeds beat anything one had thought possible without ever taking risk. To drive such a car is to
glimpse the qualities of the production models of the distant future. It points the way to vast improvements in controllability and safe handling that will make existing conceptions obsolete.” End of quote. What a description there of this car by Gordon Wilkins. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before, cruising speeds he never thought possible without taking risk.
So just a feeling of driving this car like nothing else. If you had any doubt to why the Uhlenhaut Coupe is such a legendary car after all these years, this is exactly why. It just transcended everything else by such a huge margin at the time. And Wilkins says it all right here. Like he said, to drive such a car is to glimpse the qualities of the production models of the distant future.
And then this car, and then he says, this car makes quote, existing conceptions obsolete. So I love reading this review. I’m so glad that I was able to find it. And it just kept coming up over and over and all these different books that I was looking up and, reading about Uhlenhaut. So I love this review if you haven’t noticed, but I would also strongly encourage you to go find this review and just read the entire thing. I’ll put a link.
to this review so you’ll be able to find it. But it’s about a 10 minute read and the writing is just a perfect time capsule. It’s just showing what it was like when this car hit the roads in 1956. It just blew away everything else that existed up to that point. It’s so cool. So there’s several common themes that I’m finding after doing these episodes on the greatest collector cars of all time. The creators of these cars shared several common traits.
They were the forces of nature propelling these amazing projects forward. It’s passion, vision, and perseverance that link several of these episodes together. And you’ll see this over and over with these car creators stories. Like we talked about earlier, the passion to commit all your waking hours to designing and creating amazing race cars. There’s another big theme and that’s the vision. All these amazing car stories have a very, very bold vision.
Look at Gordon Murray. He wrote in his design notebook before he even started building the McLaren F1. He said he was out to build not just any car, but he said quote, simply the world’s best car, full stop. And then there’s Enzo who had this vision to build the greatest racing stable or what they would call the Scuderia. And that was his vision with his own name attached to it, the Scuderia Ferrari. He was going to make that racing team the
best in the world. And he did it. Decade after decade for the rest of his life. That was his vision. The Scuderia Ferrari. It’s so cool to see these common themes come out in all these car creator stories I’ve done. My other favorite theme here, and there’s a ton of examples of this, but one of my one of the most amazing themes to see over and over again, it’s just the determination and the perseverance. It’s unbelievable what happens over an entire lifetime that might derail the vision.
And that’s so much of the story really over and over that I’ve seen just overcoming one challenge after the next, solving one problem, then the next, and then the next one. just never ends. So don’t forget, Uhlenhaut is designing cars right in the middle of Germany in the 1930s and 40s. World War II breaks out. He gets through it, but he has to figure out how to rebuild, restart his career and keep going. It’s just never ending.
the perseverance, determination, and just the non-stop problem solving that these car creator stories go through. Think about this, the same time Enzo Ferrari is doing this same thing in Italy, trying to figure out how he’s going to make it through some of these really tough times. They can’t race cars. Everything is shut down. There’s major world events happening all around, but they keep going. They’re working the plan for a time, hopefully at some
point in the future that they can get back on the racetrack. And sometimes it’s years later, but they do it. Another great example, Horatio Pagani. This is in 1980s and 90s, but he’s overcoming all obstacles. It took him decades, but he would be determined to build his own car using state of the art carbon fiber parts, and then trying to show how art and science can come together and walk hand in hand. That was his vision.
And like we talked about in that Pagani episode, it’s just nonstop obstacles. And then how to overcome and then just never give up year after year, decade after decade. That’s the theme I really enjoy learning about. And I see it pop up over and over. It really makes me respect these car creations so much more when I’m done. After a week long deep dive, like I do, it just makes me respect the story so much more to hear the details about what these car legends went through.
to actually produce their life’s work. So there’s so much more to this story. I would strongly recommend you check out the great book, ‘Rudolph Uhlenhaut, Engineer and Gentlemen.’ It was written by Wolfgang Scheller and Thomas Pollack. So do me a favor and share this episode with someone who might enjoy the creator’s story of the iconic Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe. My goal is to keep the legend alive.
and pass on all these amazing insights from history’s greatest car creators. Now don’t forget there’s only two cars ever built. One has the blue interior, the other has red. Let’s go back to the very first opening of the episode I read. From the review they say quote, this was truly the most fabulous toy of all. The fastest car on the road anywhere in the world today. No one can possibly say how much it cost.
And it is definitely not for sale. End of quote. That’s what they said in that opening excerpt that I read. Back in 1956, when they wrote the review, they didn’t know how much it cost. That’s for sure, because the car wasn’t for sale. But check this out. Both cars, the only two ever created, would sit in the Mercedes-Benz museum for decades. Not for sale, just like the review says.
And so just a few years ago, Mercedes decided to sell one of the cars. They sold off one of the cars for $142 million. And that’s by far the highest amount ever paid for one single car that we know of. So have a great rest of your day wherever you may be. I really appreciate you listening to this story. Remember, you can see that other car, the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe.
It’s still on display at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. And I might just see you there.