1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe – Ultimate Edition - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome to the episode of jay

leno

's

garage

, we are here in the

mercedes

-

benz

section of the

garage

. He used to work for Mercedes-Benz when he was in college. It was kind of an oil change, new car prep guys. I've always felt it. a certain loyalty to the company, the attractive design of Mercedes-Benz cars for the 6.3. I finally went back and bought a 1970 16.3 with 300,000 miles on it and we're going to put in that modern 6.3 engine, but that's another story. We'll talk about that later. These are all memories of Mercedes-Benz as a very young Stirling Moss. I've been fortunate to get to know Sterling a little over the years.

He is a wonderful, wonderful guy. Yes, Sterling Moss with the pre-production holding company. Right there is Jon Fitch Jon Fitch, the legendary American racing driver when the Mille Miglia in the

1955

Mercedes Benz was called Wing and that's what the factory was like after World War II, seven years after they had these cars on the roads , which is pretty amazing and This is something I'm very proud of. I had the opportunity to get to know Fangio a little. This is their 1951 world championship. Back then they didn't give you ten million dollars to drive. You have a little cup. a handshake a slice a cold lamb here you have your world champion thank you very much and that was it, but it is one of my most precious objects.

I love it. I mention all this because this is the car we're talking about today. the

1955

mercedes

benz

a Gullwing this is probably the most legendary mercedes of all this was the McLaren f1 of its time, they always called the Miura the first supercar and I understand that, but I think this one certainly deserves that title, also presented in 1954 in At the New York City International Auto Show, a man named Max Hoffman, who was an importer of European Porsche Mercedes-Benz BMW cars, saw the racing version of the Gullwing and said that a civilian version of the Mercedes needed to be built. -Benz and said no, we can.

Don't take any chances, he said, I guarantee I'll buy them all from you and they built 1,400 of them, 1,100 of them came from the United States, the rest went around the world in 1955, I think they built 867 of these, something like that. Interesting, this is a car I always liked but for some reason didn't like. I don't know why I didn't think I'd like to drive it. It seemed heavy to me and I had the opportunity to buy it. in a container in the desert here in California it had no engine it had no transmission it was missing things I thought well this would be an interesting project and we did it together and it's the coolest car to drive it weighs about 2,800 pounds it's a very light frame serial. of tubes all welded together I guess the Italians would call that Superleggera ripped out a woman's heart.

I believe it was the gentleman who was the engineer behind this car. Racing rules at the time said you had to have doors that opened, but they didn't say how. to open and because of the frame and the chassis that goes all the way up here you couldn't have conventional doors so they put these doors in which of course is now the iconic Mercedes-Benz, as you can see it was a racing car. the third owner, but the fascinating thing is that it was never damaged, never hit, never had a bad bypass or a serious accident. The car in 1971, when the previous owner bought it, was an old sports car, he took it to Tony Nancy. a legendary hot rodder here in California known for his hot rod interiors, he did all the fancy scoops and stuff only in hot rod magazines and he did the interior which is a Toni Nancy interior and a guy called Jr's House of Kolor, it was probably the most famous. hot rod and custom car painter in Southern California, still around today, actually still working, he did it in his candy apple red color, as you can see sitting in the dry weather, the desert cracked and the paint was peeling off It's going down, but you know something that's funny. you have a car like this, you can go like this, you know, it's not a show queen, okay, I stay away from that, you know, people want to sit in it if you want to rub against it, it's not the end of the world. at some point I will finish the restoration and restore it, but for now it's wonderful to just drive it like an old sports car, let's go to the next bedroom, we'll take another look at it, what a wonderful car it is, it's pretty amazing.

I never really appreciated how good these cars are. It had this weak shifter sticking out of here and I just thought how fast it's going to be. How could it be? It's an amazing car to drive. It was truly a revelation. How fantastic this car is. Let's review. part of the dash here, like I said, this car has not been restored, the only thing we did was take out all the gauges and clean the faces of them, this of course is your tachometer, speedometer, fuel, it has oil pressure, water , oil pressure here, oil. temperature oil pressure at that time, of course, you have the ammeter, the lights turn on the signals here, you turn them on to let you know that the enriched is in the fuel pump, something strange, which is really different, is that you have a button horn here.

I don't know you have it. here too, okay, so your parade wants to honk. I know what that's about and of course you've got your heater controls here, your cigarette lighter here too, your mechanical watch, you just wind it. I actually like that because you can turn off the power, don't lose the clock, let's take a look under the hood, the engine is back on for the first time in probably 30 35 years, this thing went to the four winds when we got it, three liter engine, what is it? 183 cubic inches 220 horsepower, the first production car with direct gasoline injection which, although common now, was really state of the art at the time, the engine was taken from the Mercedes Benz 300 series.

Notice how it is angled. sideways so you can get a low hood here the old filter there the air filter the radiator overflow they got 220 horsepower pushing 2700 pounds which was quite a bit. We had the engine on the dyno and it ran well but at high revs. It was running lean that ripe it's getting very lean what this has is in the fuel diaphragm was that the lambskin is what did it is a lambskin diaphragm you know what lambskin to use for what it is also used now for a diaphragm and Mercedes-Benz and because the engine had been sitting for a long time it had simply deteriorated and was making the car run too lean, but it worked and it would have been a situation where if we had been in the road and running.

If it was up to four or five thousand dollars, we probably would have melted a piston, yeah, I would have burned a hole using the dyno, as you can see, so we could replace that diaphragm, get the engine running perfectly fine, break it in, and then come back. to place it. On the car, unlike some Italian exotics, the German stuff, everything fits when you first buy it, this is an exceptionally well built car. You know, I've always heard about electrolysis, when you have steel fenders, aluminum and metal pieces touching metal and causing breakage. I always thought there would be a problem with these that it's not the same as this one, probably because it was in the desert in a dry climate.

You know all the parts we ordered for them and like you say they will fit even though we replaced all the oil hoses into the coolant hoses. The best thing about Mercedes-Benz is that they have something called Mercedes-Benz Classic Center, so if you have a Mercedes-Benz in any year, all the parts are available and it is a Mercedes-Benz part. It wasn't built by a parts manufacturer, for example, when I bought this, it has finned brake drums, beautiful finned drum brakes, and a big chunk of the fin broke off, we thought, well, let's use our 3D printer, we'll make a new one. part. to put it together, it probably would have cost us two grand and machining time and everything, oh absolutely, and we can buy a new drum from Mercedes-Benz, they're not cheap, but it's cheaper than not buying it.

I mean, you're not going to do it. I found out that at a swap meet the only thing we did was make a modern electronic ignition just so we wouldn't get stranded on the road and now you can go back to the original ignition at any time, you know, guys, and have these cars. They are true purists they like them to be exactly as they came out of the factory I'm not that picky I would like to I just like to drive it and use it These tires also come from the Mercedes Benz classic center you won't find that tire size, they don't make it right anymore, Mercedes-Benz them did specials, let's see if we have any problems with the transmission, the transmission was easy, I think we also ran into Jelena, yeah, the only other thing we did was brake.

Yes, we did the brakes, you always what I always wanted to do is there are several people that can do the brakes: these new wheel cylinders, new master cylinder and stainless steel brake lines, folding steering wheel, a Bernard did a couple of parts. For that, you know, some guys take and put wooden steering wheels in the NAR DS and they're fine, but I love this, I mean, it's just that German precision that clicks and makes the output go in and out of the car. It's a lot easier and for a 50's sports car to have heating and ventilation that actually works, you can get a little hot in the summer but these windows open, in fact that's the main reason they built the convertible model

300sl

.

They thought it was too much trouble to have these blackout wing doors, but in hindsight the

gullwing

is really what everyone wants now as you don't see much boot space here. Full size spare tire jack. 34 gallon gas tank. These are racing. cars and they said they actually handled better when they had a full tank, but 34 gallons of fuel, that's pretty good again, you don't want to be Britney Spears getting into this thing, push that up and it snaps into place, turn the key, leave on the battery switch, auxiliary fuel pump, this of course was the first production car to use fuel injection or gasoline fuel injection, this would work on a carbureted car, it would be a choke and fantastic sound, you know, there are some cars that you get into. and they disappoint you then there are some cars that you get into exactly what you thought you were then you have some cars that you get into it's just the police this is truly a car I like the fact that, except for the steering, nothing is of plastic, all the switches are metal and yet it's still a light car, everything has a good quality feel, you know, you turn off the lights, you hear a click, you know, I just like it, it's like winding a mechanical watch, you know, you like to hear every little gear click and because of these gold wing doors, you actually have a lot of room to move around here and you know they're owned by Elvis Presley, he had one, Sofia Loren, he had one, Frank Sinatra, everyone knows that all the cool people had a Mercedes because this was the F1 of their One day there really wasn't anything as fast as this when American cars could go a hundred miles an hour this thing was going a hundred and fifty miles an hour 150 was like 220 today when as a kid i worked at a mercedes-benz dealership in boston and we took one of these in 1969 or 70, we gave the guy $5,500 for it two weeks later, result of a $7,500 thought, well that's it, no one will get it anymore so many profits with one of these cars, well, now these things, my goodness.

I believe this will be one of the few post-war production cars to reach a million dollars. The good ones now cost half a million six seven hundred thousand dollars. I spent four hours attentive enough to get a good deal at this point because it didn't have the engine, the transmission, everything was gone and it sounds fantastic and the good thing is that this car is a modern car, it's fast, it's surprising how stable it is, Don't forget this thing was designed in the 50's in the era of fins and shiny chrome, it's so beautiful. discreet, so aerodynamic that it shows on the outside, even the door handles are clean, nothing to interfere with the air flow over the car, people wonder why they didn't put these brakes on this car, why not It had a 5 speed motor.

The car was pretty expensive as it was and all that stuff was just extra. You know, proven technology disc brakes like Mercedes-Benz were still pretty new in the early '50s and these huge Fintan brake drums work pretty well. 5 speed was just a bit expensive. Hey, at 50 miles per hour, the strength of the pace, which is pretty good, the red line is about 6 men, now you drive a modern car, there are so many electronics involved that you are not part of the car, this thing is very strange. I wish I should say that these bands hadn't done it.

They stopped making manual gearboxes, they do a good job, it's a wonderful gear change. Hey, you gotta be careful with these swing axles, they can catch you on the way out, you know, if you go into a turn and you lift theaccelerator, play. I'll break you down and spit on you, this is not the car I drive particularly hard, you don't beat it, you can drive it fast and fast, but I don't drive it hard and no, we're not going to do a Burnout. I love it. This now makes the advance the good thing about this courage: you have a normal ground clearance.

You know many modern sports cars are so low. The euro is scraping, tearing and breaking divisors. You can hang the back a little. The reason. The car needs to turn on the radio, you didn't need one, the engines are very entertaining to drive, smooth, very nice exhaust note, amazing, they did it very well the first time. What really stands out about this car is the build quality, I mean. Here it is, 155 years later and this chassis is still straight, true and strong as ever, no flex, no creak, just a rattle. I rolled down the windows and said see you next week, but the window doesn't roll down, see you. next week