It could be the most expensive car in the world, according to the company.
Imagine this. It’s 1955, and Mercedes dominates the motorsport scene. The 300 Sport Light-Racing race car (SLR) finished in a stunning 1-2 at the Mille Miglia alongside legend drivers Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss. How can you improve a machine that is already wildly successful? To begin working on a coupe version of the W196S, remove two W196S rolling chassis.
Then, disaster strikes. A major crash at the 24-hour Le Mans endurance race, June 11, 1955, kills Pierre Bouillin, the driver of the racing car, and injures nearly 180 others. Mercedes announces that it will be retiring from motor racing after the terrible incident. The three-pointed star of motorsport returned to the sport in 1989.
The 300 SLR Coupe was initially designed to compete in the 1956 season. However, Mercedes pulled out of racing and the project was eventually scrapped. The cars survived, and Rudolf Uhlenhaut (Head of the Test Department) used one of them as a company car. This car is called the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe.
The 300 SLR was a road-legal racecar. The hardtop version of the 300SLR had an engine that was derived from the W196 F1 vehicle. You can also think of it the 1950s Project One. The displacement of the eight-cylinder mill was increased from 2.5 to 3.0 Liters, and output was increased to 302 horsepower (222 Kilowatts).
The Uhlenhaut Coupe was the fastest road car on the planet at the time it was released. It could reach speeds of 180 mph (290 km/h) when it was first launched. Legend has it that Uhlenhaut drove the nameplate car on the German Autobahn, from Munich to Stuttgart to attend a meeting. He completed the trip of 137 miles in just over an hour.
The attached video, posted by Mercedes-Benz Deutschland on YouTube (hit CT for English captions), talks about the extremely rare machine that is believed to be the most expensive car in the world. Mercedes does not intend to sell either of the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupes, so the car’s actual value is not disclosed.