Max Hoffman was an exceptional man in every respect. Having fled from Austria to the USA as a young man in the 1930s, after the war he began importing European luxury cars. With his Hoffman Motor Company he served an illustrious clientele far beyond the boundaries of New York, where his showroom on Park Avenue had been designed by the master architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In the 1950s he was the first dealer to bring BMW and Alfa Romeo to America, imported Mercedes successfully and supplied much of the East Coast with Porsche. Not infrequently he played his excellent contacts right up to the top floors of the then still very family-run European brands. He was thus able to persuade Ferry Porsche, for instance, to build an open version of the 356 – the 356 Speedster.
At the same time, motorsport was on the rise in post-war Europe. The Italians, Maserati above all, marched from victory to victory, with virtually no competition. In Germany this dominance was viewed with suspicion – after all, motorsport was an unrivalled advertising platform for the brands. In 1951 the Daimler-Benz board planned its return and had test drives carried out with the pre-war Silver Arrows. It quickly became clear that the outdated technology could not keep up. Chairman Wilhelm Haspel himself is said to have then tasked development chief Rudolf Uhlenhaut with the project of a new Silver Arrow. Within a year Uhlenhaut developed a racing car that put the competition in the shade: the 300 SL. The racing coupé was presented to the media on 12 March 1952 on the A81 between Stuttgart and Heilbronn. With a one-two at the Le Mans 24 Hours, the first four places at the Nürburgring, a win at the Swiss Grand Prix in Bern and at the Carrera Panamericana, the W194 laid the foundation for the “SL myth”.
An Illustrious Clientele
Max Hoffman watched the 300 SL’s successes from afar. For the seasoned businessman it was clear: this he could sell to his customers – such a car was exactly what they had been waiting for. He travelled to Stuttgart and convinced the Daimler-Benz board that a road version of the W194 was needed. In return, he guaranteed the executives that he would take at least 1,000 cars. Barely six months later a road-homologated W198 version was ready, presented to the world not in Germany, as was usual for Daimler-Benz, but in New York. The road version was built on the tubular space frame designed by Uhlenhaut, clad in a thin sheet-metal body. The construction was almost unchanged from the racing car, so that the characteristic “gullwing doors” were also kept for the series – the very feature to which the car owes its nickname. The three-litre six-cylinder with twin carburettors was likewise carried over from the race car. And success was guaranteed: Hoffman’s illustrious customers included, alongside his architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the Hollywood actors Paul Newman and Sophia Loren.
The cornerstone of the SL legend had thus been laid. In 1955 the open version followed, the 190 SL – surprisingly, not at Hoffman’s instigation. But once again the car was presented in New York. The target audience was set, too: the beautiful and wealthy who found the gullwing too uncomfortable, who needed a convertible to be seen in, and for whom the less powerful inline four-cylinder of the 190 SL was quite enough. The SL designation, a creation of Uhlenhaut’s, remained. Today it is clear that it stands for “Super-Leicht” (super-light), even if the rumour long persisted that it meant “Sport-Leicht”. Its origin was the weight of the W194, which weighed just 1,100 kilograms – as opposed to the roughly 1,700 kilograms then usual for racing cars.
Not Merely Produced – Built
With the seventh generation, production moved to AMG in 2021. And not only production – the entire development was left to the engineers in Affalterbach. They built a car that was new from the ground up: not a single component is said to have been carried over from its predecessor. The roadster – there will be no coupé – returns to a classic fabric roof, and the interior is laid out as a 2+2. The front is a homage to the 300 SL that could hardly be more beautiful: the radiator grille with its horizontal bars and the huge Mercedes star takes up the look of the W194, the racing version of the SL from which the myth first sprang. The tapered headlights, in current Mercedes design, settle naturally into the front.
Beneath the long bonnet works a four-litre biturbo V8. In the old AMG tradition it is not simply produced on an assembly line but built in Affalterbach entirely by hand, on the “One Man, One Engine” principle. In the SL63 4Matic+ the engine delivers 585 hp, venting through a sports exhaust. Driving open-top, in this rebirth of the legend, thus becomes a symphony.
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/22 (May 2022).
