Mercedes W113 E-Book

Myles Kornblatt

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In 1963 the Mercedes W113 replaced two cars: the 300 SL racing legend and the successful 190 SL. In the process, the 230/250/280 SL two-seat coupe/roadster became an icon not only by carving out the perfect niche between its two predecessors, but also by being like no other car on the road. Mercedes W113 - The Complete Story explores both the technical and social side of how this legend was born. The book covers: the W113's predecessors - the 300 SL and the 190 SL; design and development of the 230, 250 and 280 SL models, including the distinctive concave 'Pagoda' roof and the 'Californian Coupe' rear seat option; Bela Barenyi's innovations that made the 230 SL the first 'safety sports car'; rallying successes for the W113; the R107 successor, with specialist advice on 'Pagoda' restorations, and the W113 in popular culture. Superbly illustrated with 249 colour photographs.

Leseprobe

Mercedes W113

The Complete Story

Myles Kornblatt

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2014 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

© Myles Kornblatt 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 696 3

CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

ORIGINS – BIIILDING THE FASTEST, THE MOST AND THE BEST

CHAPTER 2

THE BIRTH OF THE SL

CHAPTER 3

SLs HIT THE ROAD

CHAPTER 4

THE SL LOSES ITS TOP

CHAPTER 5

W113 IS DEVELOPED

CHAPTER 6

230 SL

CHAPTER 7

W113 GOES RALLYING

CHAPTER 8

W113 AND THE USA

CHAPTER 9

250 SL

CHAPTER 10

280 SL

CHAPTER 11

R107 – THE SUCCESSOR

CHAPTER 12

PAGODA RESTORATIONS

CHAPTER 13

TIMELESS STYLE

CHAPTER 14

GOING FORWARD

Index

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mercedes-Benz is a car company that has been built out of multiple ideas happening at once. The harmony of these ideas has allowed that company to deliver the world’s fastest cars and everyday workhorses under the same three-pointed star. But from their early beginnings as two separate companies at the turn of the twentieth century, to a united industrial giant recovering from the Second World War, the opposing ideas stayed with individual cars. It was only in 1963, with the introduction of the Mercedes 230 SL, that the two paths truly merged.

It has always been hard to define these ‘Pagoda’ cars. They were modern but elegant; sporting but not blindingly quick; premium but not exotic; safe but not numb; comfortable but not spongy. The W113 model lasted for less than a decade, but its effect will be felt for ever as the car that embodied the entire Mercedes-Benz line in one vehicle.

This book explores the ways in which founding fathers Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler built two different companies while both pioneering the automobile. It looks at the merger of two car giants on separate paths, which created one complete car company – a transportation conglomerate that can be recognized equally by its corporate name (first Daimler-Benz, now Daimler), by its company name (Mercedes-Benz), and by various abbreviations (Mercedes, Merc, or Benz).

There were two predecessors to the Pagoda on the market at the same time. One built a cool, speedy image, and the other made owning a roadster comfortable. It was in the Pagoda SL that these two concepts were then brought together.

When the 230 SL came on to the market, it won over both owners and the automotive media on an international scale by being more precise and comfortable than any other sports car available at the time. It was also the right car at the right time for the expansion of Mercedes-Benz in the crucial US market. The successive 250 and 280 SL models would bring more power and features to this line without ruining the design or the well-balanced feel.

This SL would already be prepared for many challenges during its lifetime, but it was not completely immune to the outside world. The carefree era into which the 230 SL was born would rapidly change as the automotive industry was subjected to a tangle of regulations. This book will go beyond the ways in which the Pagoda changed and explore some of the reasons why movements in the USA meant major changes for Mercedes-Benz in Germany.

The W113 is a classic that is kept on the road today both by privateers and by Mercedes. It was a fashion icon when new and today represents a timeless degree of class. Now that the Pagoda SLs are more than half a century old, it is worth taking a closer look at what made them innovative and accommodating, and why they are an everlasting representative of the three-pointed star.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library, the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, California and the Revs Institute at The Collier Collection. Archive photos and information are used with the gracious cooperation of Daimler AG. Special thanks to Michael and Patricia Kornblatt.

CHAPTER ONE

ORIGINS – BUILDING THE FASTEST, THE MOST AND THE BEST

Mercedes-Benz was built on the principles of two men who went to great lengths to construct only the best. And, being very early pioneers of automobile technology, they both had moments of self-doubt and an irresistible urge continuously to refine and improve their work. Carl Benz tested his first vehicle only at night so that any hiccups would not gain public attention. Gottlieb Daimler disguised his early innovations so that if there was a problem, others might speculate they were from other inventors.

Carl Benz.

Carl Benz

Carl Benz (who was given the name Karl but preferred to spell it with a ‘C’) had a tough upbringing. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, on 25 November 1844, to a railroad engineer father who died when he was young, and a mother who worked hard to ensure that Benz’s poor background would not hinder his education. His mother did not want him to embark on a career in trains, but the mechanical side of the business caught the young man’s attention. After attending technical college, he went on to work as a draughtsman for his hometown locomotive works.

By 1871 Benz had started his own machine shop and turned his attention to motor vehicles. While his business fortunes were not the greatest in the beginning, he took a significant step forward with his marriage in 1872. His new wife Bertha Ringer was not only savvy enough to utilize her wedding dowry to rid Carl of an unreliable business partner, but would also provide the catalyst that Benz needed to make progress.

As he built up his fledgling business, Benz decided he needed to create a grand product that the public would find popular. He put his efforts into a developing a two-stroke engine and had spent years trying to get the motor working, without success. Finally, on New Year’s Eve 1879, Bertha persuaded him to go over to the machine shop to give the motor another try. The couple saw in the new year with the exhaust note from the two-stroke motor roaring to life for the first time.

On 1 October 1883, Benz created Benz & Cie at his home in Mannheim, and within a year, it was turning a profit as an engine company. Benz was also working on a four-stroke motor that would run in a more refined manner than his two-stroke engine, with which he had now achieved good reliability. Now he finally had the pieces to begin developing a vehicle for the road. Within about a year, Benz had built a 580-lb three-wheeled vehicle with a one-cylinder, four-stroke 954cc motor that produced 0.75bhp.

Benz began testing his new vehicle. On its first run, it did not make it far within the courtyard of the machine shop before needing repair. Subsequent tests would achieve more, but the vehicle still never left the confines of the machine shop’s grounds. In January 1886, after more refinements, Benz was granted Patent 37 435 for his first vehicle.

Even with the patent, Benz was still shy about his motor car. All of his testing on the public roads around Mannheim was performed at night so that any breakdowns would not become fodder for the town gossips. He had built a second car at this point and, although he could get all the way around the city without incident, Benz could not resist tinkering with his invention. Even at these early stages, Carl Benz seemed to be living up to the future slogan of Mercedes-Benz: ‘The Best or Nothing.’

By 1886 Bertha Benz was much more convinced about the quality of her husband’s car than he was, and she wanted to find a way to prove it. She had a trip scheduled to see her mother 50 miles away in Pforzheim. Rather than take the train as planned, Bertha and the eldest Benz sons awoke before dawn. They pushed the vehicle out of the workshop and down the road, until it was far enough away from the house that the motor would not wake Benz, and then they set off. She had at least left him a note explaining where the precious vehicle was!

Bertha was resourceful enough to make a few minor repairs on the road, and she and her sons arrived in Pforzheim by nightfall with no major incident. While this may have been the first case in history of a stolen car, Bertha should certainly get the credit for the first long-distance journey in a Benz. More importantly, she gave her husband the proof he needed in order to feel confident in his motor cars.

On 29 January 1886 Benz received German patent no. 37 435 on his motorized vehicle.

The Benz family with a 3.5bhp Benz Comfortable in 1894 (left to right): son Richard, daughters Thilde and Ellen, Carl Benz, daughter Klara and son Eugen.

Gottlieb Daimler

Gottlieb Daimler was born 50 miles away from and ten years before Carl Benz. The son of a family of Stuttgart bakers, Daimler had a more comfortable upbringing than Benz. Still, it was a series of good mentors and scholarships that gave Gottlieb Daimler the opportunity of a proper education in engineering.

Gottlieb Daimler.

The difference in age meant that Benz and Daimler were not quite at the same stage in their careers as they were both finding their way to the internal combustion engine. The two men did work at the same locomotive firm in Karlsruhe within a few years of each other, but, while Daimler had a managing director position, Benz was still of an age for an entry-level position.

Shortly after completing his engineering education at Stuttgart Polytechnikum in 1860, Daimler would travel Europe learning about the machines of the Industrial Revolution. He returned home to Germany, where he took up a job managing the Bruderhaus Reutlingen near Stuttgart. According to Beverly Rae Kimes, in her book The Star and the Laurel, the Bruderhaus was ‘part orphanage, part vocational school, part engineering complex … the idea of the Lutheran theologian Gustav Werner and an ingenious religious answer to Marxism’.

Overseeing a workforce of orphans was not going to be a rewarding long-term career for Daimler, but it did introduce him to a star pupil, Wilhelm Maybach. Daimler still believed in a demand for a vehicle that was more personal than the locomotive, and was also sure that steam was not the power of the future. It was a much better fit for him when he joined the Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz company as technical manager in 1872. With Maybach in tow as chief designer, Daimler began working on producing internal combustion engines in the company started by Nikolaus Otto, father of the four-stroke engine.

After working for Deutz for a decade, Daimler was out. He wanted to make engines more mobile, and so he and Maybach set to work creating a smaller, lighter four-stroke motor. By 1883 they had a petrol-powered four-stroke that weighed less than 100lb (45.5kg) in an era when the Otto motors weighed as much as 750lb (340kg).

Having developed the engine, Daimler continued to refine it. He installed it on a bicycle, and had his sons run tests of the vehicle, which had effectively become a motorcycle. Daimler and Maybach also installed a new motor in a boat. Just like Benz, Daimler was careful not to let the public in on his testing. Unlike Benz, Daimler would run his boat during the daytime, but he employed decoy electrical terminals near the engine bay so that passengers might assume it was battery powered. Daimler also differed from Benz in that he saw a use for his engine not just in motor cars, but also for all transportation on land and water, and in the air.

Still, a motor vehicle was a priority and something that had not yet been accomplished. By 1886, around the time when Bertha Benz stole her husband’s car in order to prove its reliability, Daimler had had a carriage built by W. Wimpff & Sohn. Daimler said it was a birthday present for his wife, but in fact his plan was to attach his 1.5bhp motor to the structure to create the world’s first four-wheeled automobile. Daimler and Benz were now entering the car business at around the same time.

Daimler’s workshop, which he set up at his home in Stuttgart after leaving Deutz.

Daimler’s first motorboat on the Neckar River in 1886 (with Daimler and Maybach just right of the motor box).

Gottlieb Daimler formed Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) on 28 November 1890. Once speed laws in Germany were relaxed, DMG would grow to produce some of the most powerful cars of the time. Carl Benz was also doing well; his company would develop into the largest car manufacturer in the world, with production exceeding 600 vehicles at the turn of the century. Between the two men, the vehicles represented significant manufacturing precision and speed.

The era of the motor car had begun, but for one of its pioneers it was the end of his road. Gottlieb Daimler was still part of DMG when he died, on 6 March 1900. There is no record of Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler ever formally meeting. After all, at the time of Daimler’s death, neither man could have known what the future was for their two companies, and surely neither could have predicted the amazing accomplishments that came with the union.

Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach’s high-speed four-stroke engine with hot-tube ignition.

Duelling Performance and Practicality

Mutton chops and a safari helmet might not seem like a recipe for sales success, but Emil Jellinek was DMG’s best customer at the turn of the century. A successful businessman from Vienna with an office in Nice, he liked speed and rubbed shoulders with all the right people.

Jellinek was first attracted to the brand when he noticed that Daimler’s company built the motors in most of the major race winners. He had purchased a 6bhp belt-driven car in 1897, but found it too slow. He would continue to demand cars with more power. As the factory kept abiding by his requests, Jellinek continued to order more cars that he would sell in France.

As the power ratings kept going up, Jellinek became a more important force on the race circuits. However, people knew him by a different name. During that time racers would often use pseudonyms, and Jellinek decided to borrow his daughter’s name, Mercedes.

The racer known as Mercedes became so notable that, when Jellinek placed an order for a 35bhp model, the car would carry his daughter’s name rather than the DMG brand. Designed by Maybach, the new car featured such innovations as a pressed-steel frame, gated four-speed transmission, and the honeycomb grille that is now a hallmark. Jellinek was now as much a distributor of Mercedes cars as he was a driver. He knew that the first competition this car really needed to win would be at Nice Week in March. The wealthy citizens of the Riviera would marvel at the creations setting records in their playground, and a victory here would inevitably lead to more sales.

Emil Jellinek and his daughter Mercedes.

Vehicle assembly at DMG around 1912.

In fact, the Mercedes won all the events during Nice Week. This inspired Jellinek to re-body the car as a four-seater to show the well-heeled of France that the car that dominated their events was not only sporting but also luxurious. The idea proved to be such a good one that it was carried over into new offerings from Mercedes.

The Mercedes became the car to beat or the car to buy. It was so successful that in 1902 DMG registered the trademark and officially renamed the company ‘Mercedes’. The next year Jellinek, who was known to have a bit of an ego, obtained permission to call himself Jellinek-Mercedes, saying: ‘This is probably the first time that a father has taken his daughter’s name.’

Meanwhile, Carl Benz was falling a little behind the times. He believed in high-quality, low-powered cars. As executives within his company were going around him to have higherperformance models developed, Benz realized that it was time to step away. On 24 January 1903, Benz announced his retirement from the board of directors and took a seat on the Supervisory Board. Now with both patriarchs out of the day-to-day operations, the newly christened Mercedes and the Benz automobile companies would spend the next decade building international empires based on swiftness and substance.

The outbreak of the First World War put the brakes on the need for speed, and both Benz and DMG went into aircraft production. In 1916 DMG built a new factory in Sindelfingen, outside Stuttgart, to increase aircraft production. The factory would become significant in the future, but by the time peace was declared, in 1919, it was just dead weight. In fact, both Benz and DMG found themselves in a bad way after the war. The collapse of the German economy and the temporary loss of its international dealer network had Benz and DMG seriously entertain the idea of merging companies only a few months after the signing of the peace treaties. However, the two sides could not quite agree to terms, and the companies stayed independent … for the time being.

Instead of joining forces, the companies dug deeper into technical advances. In what seemed to fit with the early days, when their respective founders were in charge, Mercedes went for power while Benz went for practicality. DMG would advance its horsepower with the development of the supercharger, and Benz decided that diesel motors could provide a helpful alternative in transportation.

While the companies had retreated into their workshops, private drivers had begun to take their cars off to the tracks again. In 1921 Count Louis Zborowski began mixing modified Mercedes chassis with aircraft engines to run the Easter Meeting at the Brooklands track in England. This car was nicknamed ‘Chitty Bang Bang’ for the raucous noise produced by the aero engine. Count Zborowski’s first car, Chitty 1, used a Mercedes engine, but Chitty II, in common with another creation by the British firm C.H. Crowe & Company, mixed the Mercedes chassis and a Benz aero engine. While these men had no idea of the future, they were creating the first unofficial Mercedes-Benz racing cars. It would not be long before the name became a bit more official.

Benz did have racing credential such as the 1909 Blitzen-Benz.

Both companies were trying to get back to the normal business of producing winning racing cars and luxury passenger cars in the early 1920s. Unfortunately, the runaway German economy was making matters very difficult. A customer named Jakob Schapiro was draining the company resources by ordering chassis for his coach-building business on credit, and using the float time and massive inflation to pay Benz very little for their product. At the same time as he was weakening the company, Schapiro was also buying up Benz stock.

With the company about to be taken over, Benz needed a strong ally, and it was Emil Georg von Stauss who now took an interest. Using his position with Deutsche Bank and on the DMG board, he began to bring the two car companies closer. In May 1924, DMG and Benz signed an ‘Agreement of Mutual Interest’, which pooled parts of the dealer network as well as refining the automotive product to be more complementary.

The three-pointed star and the laurel were combined for the new Mercedes-Benz symbol.

This was not initially an easy pairing. In the two decades after Carl Benz’s departure from being hands-on with Benz & Cie, the peacetime agenda was focused on competing with DMG. Benz engines got larger, and while they kept producing more entry-level cars, a fellow German was pushing Mercedes off the racetrack. Overlap would be addressed in the interest of survival, and on 28 June 1926, Daimler-Benz AG was registered. The cars with the three-pointed star and the cars with the laurel merged to all be the star and the laurel of Mercedes-Benz.

With financial matters settled, and the economy on the mend, Mercedes-Benz got down to the business of building cars for the track and the road. The new products carried the tradition of covering a very wide market. For example, the only feature shared by the Mercedes-Benz Stuttgart 200 saloon and the Mercedes-Benz SSK was a six-cylinder engine. The 200 Stuttgart had a dependable and prudent image, and its 2.0-litre frugal engine made it the favourite of Germany’s taxi drivers. The 1928 SSK (‘SS’ for Super Sport, and ‘K’ for kurtz or ‘short’) – Ferdinand Porsche’s swan-song with the company – was a shorter and lighter version of the already competitive SS car. Its 7.1-litre supercharged motor produced 200bhp at its introduction in 1928 but was up to 250bhp when the last of the 31 total production was completed in 1932.

The Mercedes SSK and two premium saloons carrying Maybach’s name on display at Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim, Germany.

The only car rarer than the SSK was the SSKL (‘L’ for ‘light’), on which drilling holes in everything from the chassis to the brake pedal had saved 250lb (114kg). Only seven of these 300bhp race track dominators were made, and none is known to survive. This would be the first time a Mercedes-Benz would carry both ‘Sport’ and ‘Light’ in its name but certainly not the last.

By the time America’s Great Depression reached Germany, the Mercedes-Benz line-up was at its broadest ever. For the wealthiest of the world, Mercedes had introduced the Type 770. The 7.7-litre machine topped out with a supercharger and convertible body at RM 47,500. At the other end of the spectrum was the most economical car Mercedes-Benz had introduced to date. The new Type 170 undercut the Stuttgart saloon by over 25 per cent at RM 4,400. Including such features as independent swing axles for the front and rear suspension, the little 1.7-litre car was considered quite good value. By 1932, after a full year of production, Mercedes had produced 4,481 Type 170 models, which was more than the total number of all passenger car models produced by the company in the previous year.

Manfred von Brauchitsch with a streamlined Mercedes-Benz SSKL at the Avus race at Berlin.

A 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680 S with a body by the famed French firm Saoutchik, winning the 2012 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elégance.

RUDOLF UHLENHAUT

A less than stellar Grand Prix race season in 1936 led to a radical decision for Mercedes racing, with the creation of a new division specifically to focus on getting the tri-star back in the winner’s circle. It would prove to be one of the company’s most fruitful moves.

Daimler-Benz’s first racing department was put in the hands of 30-year-old Rudolf Uhlenhaut, a young engineer with the driving skills of a professional racer. He took the 1936 GP cars to the Nürburgring and personally wore both vehicles out. Uhlenhaut realized that the chassis and suspension felt much like those of the company’s passenger cars, so he immediately set about developing a bespoke vehicle for the track. The result was the W127 Silver Arrow, in which Rudolf Caracciola would win the 1937 European Championship Grand Prix.

The Third Reich offered some partial racing subsidies to both Mercedes and Auto Union, but it had high expectations of nothing but success. This sparked an intra-country rivalry between the tri-star and the four rings, and in the end led to the creation of some of the most radical racing vehicles to date. Under the guidance of Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the racing department, and its ace driver Rudolf Caracciola, went chasing speed records. In January 1938 Mercedes was responsible for a streamlined machine that raised the top speed bar to 268mph (nearly 429km/h).

After the end of the Second World War, Uhlenhaut was eager to get back to racing. In the first half of the 1950s, he would develop the 300 SL (W194), the post-war Silver Arrows (W196), and the 300 SLR (W196 S). And even after the curtain had fallen on the racing department, Uhlenhaut still had speed in his heart – he took a 300 SLR chassis and gave it a touring car gullwing body to create his own personal race car.

Uhlenhaut was also made Head of Passenger Car Research at Daimler-Benz in the early 1950s. Not only were the 300 SL and 190 SL road cars produced during his tenure, but it also carried him into the development of the W113 Pagoda SL, as well as its successor. Uhlenhaut retired in 1972, leaving the legacy of the iconic W116 S-Class as his last creation.

Rudolf Uhlenhaut with the 300 SL overlooking Stuttgart in 1953.

1937 540 K Spezial Roadster at a 2011 auction.

Although Germany would climb out of the economic turmoil under a dark cloud, there was new vigour in the automotive industry, which benefited from a relaxation on taxes. Mercedes arguably hit its high watermark in passenger cars in 1936 with the 540 K – 2.5 tons of rolling sculpture. With 180bhp on tap this was also the fastest non-racing production car at the time, with a top speed above 105mph (168km/h)

Mercedes had not, however, completely abandoned its practicality at this time. In the same year, 1936, the company also introduced the 260 D, the first diesel engine production car. Where the 540 K was a display of opulence, the 260 D represented a continuation of the tradition of sturdy economy. Both were part of the same Mercedes-Benz catalogue.

Daimler-Benz was also responsible for producing the 30 prototype vehicles that would eventually become the Volkswagen Beetle. Hitler had started building a brand-new factory for these little cars, but it was Mercedes that was the only company to have a significant pre-production run before the outbreak of the Second World War.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BIRTH OF THE SL

Mercedes-Benz factories were an important target during the Second World War, and every one of the company’s plants was in need of repair at the end of the conflict. In a time when it was hard to come by food let alone steel, getting production started up again was a slow process. In 1946, Mercedes-Benz was able to produce only 214 of its 170V saloon, which had been designed before the war. However, once the German Economic Miracle was in full swing, recovery came at a rapid pace; by 1950, production of the 170V saloon had grown to 11,876. Even more importantly, there were new models on the horizon, including the 220 saloon and its upmarket sibling the 300 series.

While passenger cars were a priority, some at Mercedes-Benz were immediately ready to return to the racetrack. Rudolf Uhlenhaut was still head of the racing department, and he was already ready to compete when production re-started in 1946. Although he had designs in hand, a lack of resources and manpower meant, however, that he would have to wait a few years before he could develop a new racing programme.

With the launch in 1951 of the 300 series, Mercedes went back to its old business of having one line of cars for the masses, alongside some more exclusive models. With a new luxury model and six-cylinder engine in production, the Daimler-Benz board gave its approval to a new motorsport plan. The ultimate goal was to return to the world of Formula 1 Grand Prix racing in time for the 1954 rule changes. Included in this grand design was a sports-car programme utilizing many parts already in production so that Mercedes could re-establish its name in competition before the F1 car was ready.

Wind-tunnel measurements with the W194 and its close mechanical sibling, the 300 S (W188).

SL Born for the Track

The starting point for the new sports car would be the new 300 S, a higher-performance cabriolet model that took the 3.0-litre straight six from 115bhp to 150bhp. Uhlenhaut’s team worked on the intake and exhaust to raise the motor (now designated M 194) to 170bhp. This was shy of the 200bhp that Uhlenhaut thought Mercedes-Benz needed to be competitive, but he had a few tricks up his sleeve to keep his new cars viable.

The W194, as it was known internally at Mercedes, utilized a new form of chassis construction known as a spaceframe. Borrowing a technique from the aviation industry, rather than building a car on a ladder chassis, the car was held together by a series of small steel tubes. Uhlenhaut and his men built scale models in order to identify the points at which there would be the largest stress loads, to determine where and how the tubing would be welded together to make a complete car. The result was a 94.5in wheelbase chassis that came in at 110lb (50kg).