AutoCult Mercedes Benz 300SL AMG Gullwing (W198) (1974) (Germany)

About the Original:

One-off Gullwing

In the first half of the 1970s, when the millionaire and Mercedes-Benz shareholder Friedrich Karl Flick set his mind on owning the fastest car on Germany’s roads, he probably quickly realized that this dream could only be fulfilled with a custom order.

Probably still influenced by the zeitgeist of the 1950s and fixed on the dream car of the time, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, he found a copy of the gull-winged Benz, built in 1957, in Venezuela and had it brought back to Germany. It was necessary to change the look of the timeless classic according to the ideas of the millionaire and of course also to fit a very powerful engine under the front hood. For this task, he relied on the expertise of the then fledgling company AMG. In order to reach the goal of the fastest passenger car, the AMG owners, Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher, planned to install a 6.3-litre engine, but the dimensions of the engine compartment did not allow this. However, the V8, 4.5-litre engine of the Mercedes 450 SE proved to be suitable. With AMG’s tuning skills, the performance was increased to 280 hp.

The complete conversion took a whole year, but in 1974 Friedrich Karl Flick was finally able to pride himself on owning not only the fastest but also the most expensive car in Germany at that time. Rumor has it that the technical and optical modification of the fashionable gull-winged Benz had swallowed up the incredible sum of 500,000 DM.