Victory
In a single stroke, this 300 Super Light propelled Mercedes-Benz back to engineering preeminence and helped found an SL dynasty now 60 years strong
 
Necessity – so they say – is the mother of invention. Daimler-Benz historians easily agree on the need. Leveled in 1945, the company had risen from the ashes of World War II to once again produce Mercedes-Benz cars. Chief Executive Wilhelm Haspel wanted to make the point on the world’s motorsports stage that the company intended to be a leader in automotive manufacturing. Motorsports director Alfred Neubauer briefly considered returning to Formula 1 with an adaptation of one of the company’s prewar race cars, but quickly determined that Mercedes-Benz could not be competitive there.

Chassis No. 194/07, above, put Mercedes-Benz back on the map with the win at Le Mans in 1952, driven by Herman Lang and Fritz Reiss,  with another  W194  coming in second (above a period photograph shows 194/07, carrying Number 21, on the Esses at Le Mans before the Mulsanne Straight.

Instead, he decided to focus on sports car racing, where he believed the company could build a car that could compete in the long-distance road races.
However, chief engineer Fritz Nallinger had few resources on which to draw. Suspension and drive-train components would have to come from the utilitarian 220 sedan and the 300 limousine. But the engineers could draw on wartime aerospace technologies, including tubular space-frame construction and aluminum panel-forming to build a lightweight, aerodynamic chassis and body. From these necessities, the company designed the W194, introduced in March 1952 as the 300SL. The initials were short for Super Leicht, or super light, and a remarkable legacy was born.

The first long-distance sports car road race on the 1952 schedule was the Mille Miglia, scheduled for April 5. With only 170 horsepower and 4-speed gearboxes, Neubauer wasn’t optimistic, but he had to work with what Nallinger could give him. Nevertheless, in the first international competition for Mercedes since before the war, Karl Kling led the race at the halfway point and was a close second to a Ferrari at the finish. A few weeks later, racing in the preliminary grand prix for sports cars in Bern, Switzerland, the W194s came in first, second, and third.

Color pictures of restored 194/07 on display at Amelia Island earlier this year.

Building on what had been learned from the first cars, including the need for a longer door extending below the beltline of the car, a second group of W194s was built in the late spring to race at Le Mans that June, including Chassis No. 194/07. Astounding as it must have seemed, in the company’s first postwar effort and in a car designed from the ground up in fewer than 18 months, with Hermann Lang and Fritz Reiss driving, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL won Le Mans – the most challenging racing event of the time – with one of the other 194s in second. This victory was also the first time that a German-built car had ever won the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

To be competitive at the subsequent Grand Prix of Nürburgring sports car race, on a circuit where visibility mattered more than aerodynamics, 194/07 and the other three 194s entered were rebodied to roadster configuration. For the second time, Mercedes-Benz swept the first three places, with Lang taking first again in 194/07.

The black and white picture is of one of the competition cars at the Carrera Panamericana, illustrating the alternative roadster body style used by the Mercedes-Benz cars at the Grand Prix of Nürburgring and subsequently by some of the 300SLs on the Carrera.

Probably by this time a little tired, 194/07 was then shipped to Mexico but used only as a practice and PR car for the Carrera Panamerica race held in that country in November.

Neubauer hadn’t even included the Carrera on his schedule, but American John Fitch, who had driven one of the Cunninghams against the Mercedes team at Le Mans, and then tested at the Nürburgring to become a driver for Stuttgart, suggested that the new race would be ideal for Mercedes-Benz to gain valuable publicity in the growing United States market.

The very functional and simple interior of the W194 is in marked contrast to the 2013 SL550. 

The Carrera Panamerica was getting significant attention in North America at that time. Mercedes-Benz would take first and second in the sports car class and with Lincoln winning the sedan class, headlines throughout the United States trumpeted the company’s victory. Reporting to the Daimler main board, Neubauer’s assistant and motorsports press chief, said, “We were nothing in 1945. Now we were somebody again.”

Note the very lightweight doors. 

Working with technologies untried in motorsports and a parts bin of sedan components, Mercedes-Benz had swept the table in sports car racing in one season. More important to the company’s future, several parts of its future heritage had been established. The concept of a lightweight sports car had become a recognized part of Mercedes product planning. With the attention garnered by the victories in America, entrepreneur Max Hoffman began talking about the possibility of a production version of the 300SL for the U.S. market. And not to be disregarded, Mercedes engineers began to think about the idea of a lightweight unit-body chassis as the foundation for all types of future cars, replacing the heavy body-on-frame structure that had been the singular tradition for Mercedes-Benz since its beginnings.

Following the Carrera event, 194/07 was returned to Stuttgart. There, it was converted into a street-going 300SL Gullwing configuration and given to a Mercedes director as a personal vehicle. The conversion involved replacement of the carbureted-type 194 engine with a fuel-injected type 198 engine and replacement of the original body with an alloy Gullwing body. The car was eventually sold to a private owner, and later owned and used for many years by noted motorsports photographer Jesse Alexander.

The current owner enaged the Classic Center in Fellbach, Germany, to restore 194/07 to its original W194 configuration. The original frame and suspension were carefully restored and a new body was constructed to original gullwing specifications, as raced at Le Mans. Engine No. 194/21, the engine which records indicate is the other car that raced at Le Mans and the only known original-type 194 engine in private ownership, was obtained and reunited with its original chassis, and the car was finished in authentic Le Mans livery, as shown on these pages. The car is now used actively for various events, including demonstration rides for the press at the launch of the SLS AMG in Mexico, and the recent Concours d’Elegance at Amelia Island.