The Gullwing and this magazine have a special relationship besides sharing an official birth year of 1955. While stationed in Germany as an Army Signal Corps radio repairman in 1958, our most senior alumnus, Karl Ludvigsen, traded his Renault Dauphine for a used 300SL that had placed seventh in the 1956 Mille Miglia. Tour over, Ludvigsen shipped the car home, using it to drive across the country and as a daily commuter in New York City while editing this magazine.
Six decades later, Craig Eckberg is the kind of classic-car guy we all think everyone should be. He believes that cars are outdoor products to be used out of doors. Since buying his 1955 300SL at auction back in 2000, immaculately restored and complete with an original set of Rudge knockoff wheels, he’s put on more than 50,000 miles running road rallies such as the Colorado Grand. The front end of his Gullwing is lightly sprayed with stone chips, and the oatmeal-colored leather seats have the inviting patina of Gottlieb Daimler’s reading chair. So, in other words, the car is perfect.
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I had gently asked Eckberg for a short drive, figuring a couple miles of chaperoned Gullwing time would be enough for this story. What I get is 10 hours solo behind the wheel, crisscrossing L.A. while Eckberg is needed elsewhere; his old friend, Ron Johnson, a Gullwing owner himself who volunteers to assist, joins us in the new (and air-conditioned) AMG GT S. Everybody seated exactly where they want to be, we purr out of Eckberg’s driveway and into the California sunshine, the Pacific exhaling a cool, damp zephyr.
Through the decades, Mercedes’ interest in sporty cars has waxed and waned. It teased the public with mid-engined concepts and built the hyper-homologation special, the CLK GTR of 1998–1999, but ultimately it never abandoned the front-engine grand-touring format that began with the W198. In 2010, Benz produced the gullwing-door SLS AMG, a tribute to the original 300SL but with contemporary—meaning outlandish—proportions. This year, with the aging and almost-dead SLS now starting at $224,605, Mercedes released a sort of second draft, the twin-turbocharged AMG GT. It is slightly more humble with its conventional doors, definitely more handsome, and a heck of a lot cheaper. The hottest 503-hp S version starts at $130,825.
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The roughly 60-year-old Gullwing somehow looks more radical and futuristic than the GT S. |
Some bill the new AMG GT as Benz’s Porsche 911 fighter, but it’s not a role the car seems to relish. Still overtly large, it’s a fast, menacing machine, but one that puts its best attributes forward when left in comfort mode. In other words, when it’s behaving more like the glorious 300SL.
Such a relaxed automobile is the SL, such an unflappable sweetheart. With the son of Sloping Otto snoring out smooth, thick torque enriched by Bosch mechanical direct fuel injection, the Gullwing moves with a surprisingly modern swiftness when you get on it. Eckberg’s has the optional 3.25:1 final-drive ratio, the tallest originally available, giving this sports car legs as long as the Rhine. Three fingers of a relaxed hand move the shifter through four gears, and then it’s another endless run to the 6400-rpm redline. At 75 mph, the tach touches 2800 rpm. With its 34-gallon tank filled, we could probably make the Pyrenees by nightfall.
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Top left: Rudge wheels are the business. |
The SL’s designers put the car’s latticework structure to the outside, forcing the seats together between two wide runs of triangulated framing. The gullwing doors were thus a necessity, as conventional doors wouldn’t work on a coupe with this design. The extra-wide sills have long served as park benches for winded drivers and flummoxed mechanics, but there’s no easy way in. My technique: Stick the right leg in, twist, drop, and then pull in the left. Some people go both feet in at once, which takes more gymnastics than bad sciatica will allow. A heavy latch and hinge let the steering wheel fold down, but that doesn’t help your freedom of movement much. Getting out, you feel like toothpaste oozing from the tube.
Compared with the fashionably cocooned AMG GT S, in which the bodywork comes up to your eyeballs, you seem to sit high in the SL, with a 360-degree surround view through the ample curving glass. How easy it must have been to spot Clark Gable in his cowboy hat goosing it down the Miracle Mile. Eckberg didn’t bother to explain the many unlabeled knobs on the chromed dashboard besides the choke, the fuel pump, and the vital cowl-flap lever that lets welcome air into the terrarium-like cabin. He did recommend that I lock the doors, as they have a tendency to unlatch themselves over bumps.
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