1963/2001 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Recreation

The original 300SL Gullwing was launched at the New York International Auto Show in February 1954. It was a sleek and stunning car that was crammed with the latest mechanical and technological advancements, ensuring the Gullwing was an almost instant Hall of Fame car. It was the world’s first direct fuel-injection production car, giving it 215bhp over the 175bhp carburetted variations.

The ‘SL’ stood for "Sport Leicht" (Sport Light) as the car's body was primarily made from aluminium, and its spaceframe construction kept its weight down to just 1,295kg. The ‘Gullwing’ moniker is fairly self-explanatory however the gullwing doors weren’t just for show, they were a practical solution. The 300SL featured a tubular spaceframe chassis, which provided exceptional strength and lightness, but with high sides that made traditional doors impossible to fit. The upward-opening gullwing design was created to allow easy entry and exit, and they happen to look impossibly cool in the process. It also featured innovative elements like the tilting steering wheel to aid with entry and exit, given the high sides of the spaceframe.

The 300SL was born from Mercedes-Benz's W194 race car, which was highly successful having won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1952. Mercedes adapted the race car into a road-going version due to demand from American importer Max Hoffman, who convinced the company there was a market for such a vehicle in the US.

So, the Gullwing was fast, gorgeous, successful and unsurprisingly, expensive. With just 1,400 300SL Gullwings made between 1954 and 1957, their rarity factor has only served to further increase the value. So, what’s a good alternative? You make your own, and that’s exactly what has been done here with an incredibly impressive eye for detail.

Using a German-delivered 2001 Mercedes-Benz SLK32 AMG as a base car, this fabulously accurate Gullwing Recreation is an incredible homage to the original car. While this Gullwing retains the best parts of the SLK’s modern features such as ABS, disc brakes all-round, multi-link suspension, power steering, the 3.2-litre supercharged engine and 5-speed automatic transmission, it is the styling and original Gullwing parts that make this recreation so special.

We’ve seen 300SL Evocations pop up for sale before and the quality varies considerably. Even some of the better ones will often use the donor car’s interior fittings, but at a glance this one’s a spit of the real thing – right down to an authentic hinged steering wheel, dials and original gear lever.

At a glance giveaways are few. The 1963 number plate might appear old enough to elicit a double-take but it must be said that the donor car is masterfully hidden, with only a few giveaways such as the exhausts, automatic gear linkage and of course, the engine bay. The overall proportions look spot-on.

The body is made of glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) over an integral tubular steel spaceframe on the SLK platform. Using their first Gullwing as the reference point, it was imperative to use as many original Gullwing parts, or Mercedes parts if more appropriate, ensuring pinpoint accuracy.

Utilising a modern platform does bring advantages too. Well, disadvantages if you’re a stickler for originality, but if you want to just hop in and drive, the car’s modern 3.2-litre fuel-injected V6, traction control and ABS all promise swift and safe behaviour, with at least some of the involvement of the real deal. The SLK’s multilink rear suspension might suffer fools better than the original swing axle, too. The build cost was hugely expensive just for parts, let alone the added labour time, so we won’t denigrate it by saying 'that’s a lot for an SLK', since there’s so little SLK left and seriously honourable craftsmanship has clearly gone into it.

Just 1,400 road-going Gullwings were built between 1954 and 1957, 24 of which had aluminium-alloy body panels. Prices for steel and alloy-bodied examples vary between £1,500,000 for a 1957 car in Concours condition, to a mindblowing $6,825,000 (approximately £5,630,000), for the alloy-bodied car that sold through RM Sotheby’s.

Even ‘Condition 4’ Gullwings make an average of £979,000 between buyers, so for a collector with the ambition but not necessarily the means, this recreation marks a significant saving. Or, should you be sufficiently fortunate to own an original car and not want to put too many miles on it, this could be the perfect solution.

While it’s acknowledged as one of the first supercars, a motorsport-derived true icon of the 1950s and as beautiful to drive as it is to behold – the Mercedes-Benz 300SL ‘Gullwing’ is profoundly expensive. Thankfully, humans are resourceful beings and if you don’t mind trading the 300SL’s provenance and authenticity for some ingenuity and modern engineering, you can buy yourself this fabulous Gullwing Recreation for a whole lot less.

With all the looks of the glorious 300SL Gullwing, the modern reliability and capabilities of the SLK32 AMG, and a sufficient number of original 300SL parts to blend in some genuine Gullwing DNA, this fabulous motor car really needs to be seen in person to fully understand the passion involved.