By the end of the Second World War, the benchmarks had changed in Germany and Western Europe. People were suffering greater hardship, their needs were existential, their standards more modest, the newly elected Federal government in West Germany was closer to the people and democratic.
An elegant, open-top sports car with the Mercedes star on its radiator: That is model 190 SL (W 121), which Mercedes-Benz presented in New York in 1954 and whose market launch was in 1955.
Around the end of the 1920s, the time was ripe for Mercedes-Benz to set a new landmark in the premium car segment. The Model 630 was no longer in keeping with the times, and Daimler-Benz was in danger of losing its standing in the top car class in view of the Maybach 12 model with a V12 engine (7-litre displacement, 150 hp/110 kW) which was brought out at the end of 1929 by its competitor Maybach, and the Zeppelin 8 model presented at the Paris Show a year later (8-litre displacement, 200 hp/147 kW).
Eternal youth is a miracle bestowed on only a small number of cars, and the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupe is one of this elite group. The Stuttgart-based brand unveiled its new sports car in February 1954 at the International Motor Sports Show in New York, and in so doing lit the fuse for an icon of the automotive world. With its flat, graceful body, the 300 SL had lost nothing of its freshness even as the millennium drew to a close and was voted “Sports car of the Century” in 1999. “Gullwing” doors provided that essential touch of inspiration, opening up towards the sky to reveal a tightly sculptured interior.
Two new – and very different – Mercedes models were displayed at the Berlin Motor Show in March 1934. One was the 130, Mercedes-Benz’s first production car with a rear-mounted four-cylinder engine which developed 26 hp from a displacement of 1.3 liters. The other was the 500 K, an imposing, elegant sports car with supercharged eight-cylinder engine; with the supercharger engaged, it developed 160 hp from a displacement of 5,018 cc.
The 500 K was the successor to the 380 presented only one year earlier, and a descendant of the tremendously powerful, supercharged S, SS, SSK and SSKL sports cars, virtually invincible in motor sport.