Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR "Uhlenhaut-Coupé", 1955

The 300 SLR Coupé made its first public appearance at the beginning of August 1955, when it was driven by Rudolf Uhlenhaut during practice for the Swedish Grand Prix in Kristianstad. Accordingly, experts and the public perceived it as a closed version of the open-top 300 SLR racing car, which had already clinched a spectacular double victory in the Mille Miglia and also finished the race in Sweden with a double victory.

In fact, the body designers in Sindelfingen had already created the beautiful gullwing coupé in November 1953 as the first variant of the 300 SLR. The open-top version followed seven months later in June 1954. The first start of the new racing sports car was actually planned for the 1954 Mille Miglia, which was organised at the beginning of May, and an outing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans was to follow in June. However, the development, which was practically completed apart from fine-tuning and testing, was then put on hold in the spring of 1954 in order to utilise all the available capacities of the racing department for the commitment in the Formula 1 World Championship with the W 196 R, which was also completely redesigned. Daimler-Benz publicised this decision in a press release at the end of March.

The 300 SLR only received its finishing touches in the late summer of 1954 after the successful start of the Formula 1 season. In the meantime, the majority of the drivers questioned by racing director Alfred Neubauer had spoken out in favour of an open-top racing car instead of the coupé originally planned, mainly because of the expected noise development in the cockpit. In the 1955 World Sports Car Championship, which began for Daimler-Benz with the Mille Miglia that started on 30 April and 1 May in Brescia, only the open-top version initially made an appearance.

With a view to participation in the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico scheduled for the end of November 1955 and to the 1956 season, in which Daimler-Benz wanted to strengthen its involvement in the World Sports Car Championship, the coupé version was reactivated in the summer of 1955 and two examples were completed. For long-distance races in particular, the aim was to give drivers the option of choosing between the open and closed variants, depending on their personal preferences. However, the two vehicles were not used in racing after the Daimler-Benz Board of Management decided to withdraw from motorsport on 11 October 1955. This decision was made public on 22 October on the occasion of the victory celebration at the Untertürkheim plant. 

The 300 SLR Coupé's motorsport outings were limited to practice and test drives at the Swedish Grand Prix, the Motodromo in Monza, the Tourist Trophy in Ireland and the Targa Florio. The first completed coupé covered more than 10,000 kilometres; Rudolf Uhlenhaut was mainly at the wheel; Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips, a newcomer to the Mercedes-Benz racing team, was given the opportunity to familiarise himself with the 300 SLR on the trip to the Tourist Trophy in Ireland. With a third place, which he achieved in a team with André Simon in the open-top version, the talented young driver contributed to the Mercedes-Benz one-two-three victory in this race.

The fact that the 300 SLR Coupé did not gather dust after the end of the season was mainly down to Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who as head of the testing department was also heavily involved in fine-tuning the racing sports car. Uhlenhaut, who was regarded as an excellent driver and was a master at piloting the Silver Arrows around the track at racing speed, had already impressively demonstrated the reliability and suitability for everyday use of the high-calibre 300 hp racing sports car with his extensive journeys across Europe. 

So it made sense to make the spectacular racing sports car available to the trade press for extensive everyday testing. In July 1956, journalists from the Swiss "Automobil Revue" magazine, led by its editor-in-chief Robert Braunschweig, subjected the 300 SLR Coupé to a long-distance test covering a total of 3500 kilometres. One concession to road traffic was the huge exhaust silencer on the right-hand side of the vehicle, which reduced the deafening background noise to a more bearable level. At the beginning of July and in mid-September, high-speed test drives and top speed measurements were carried out with both examples of the coupé in the presence of Rudolf Uhlenhaut. In his test report, published in the "Automobil Revue" issue of 12 December 1956, the tester was almost enthusiastic about the qualities of the 300 SLR: 

"We are driving a car that [...] overtakes other vehicles in just over a second, a car in which 200 km/h on a motorway with little traffic is a slow pace, a car whose cornering safety seems to defy the laws of centrifugal force, a car that needs less petrol at 160 km/h than some saloons at more modest speeds, but also a car that you can never buy and that no average driver would ever buy. [...] There were already vehicles with similar or even higher performance in the past. These were supercharged racing cars that consumed 150 litres of fuel per 100 km, could only be mastered by a few top drivers and required minor or major repairs after each race. The 300 SLR has none of the fragility of its ancestors. Our test car drove at a leisurely pace through towns and villages in Switzerland, Germany and Italy, stormed up steep mountain roads at full throttle, endured the toughest acceleration and braking tests on the Monza circuit, covered long stretches of motorway at averages of around 200 km/h, reached a maximum speed of 284 km/h, once even 290 km/h, and in between served purely as a means of transport without the slightest breakdown. The fact that Daimler-Benz has full confidence in the durability of its currently most powerful model was demonstrated by its willingness to give the "AR" an SLR for a long-distance test. The 12,000 kilometres that the odometer showed when we took over the car, which Rudolf Uhlenhaut had driven on journeys across Europe and as far as Sweden, are even more proof that this technically unusual car, which is happy with any commercially available premium fuel, embodies a reliability that is unusual in high-performance vehicle construction. [...] It would be hard to imagine anything less exciting than the maximum speed measurement. We wait on the Munich–Eching motorway at four o'clock in the morning on a September morning until the police have cordoned off the road. First two warm-up runs, then we start. [...] How did the car drive at 290 km/h? Dead straight, without batting an eye. It was unsensational to the point of excess. Because the power of the 300 SLR is not too much for the car, and also not for the driver who knows how to utilise it sensibly. Even on our narrow, congested roads, a car with the performance and safety of the 300 SLR can achieve averages that seem utopian, while fully respecting the rules of decency. The significance of such a racing car is not limited to its successes or the enthusiasm it arouses in friends of sporty masterful designs. Rather, it shows that there are still unutilised technical possibilities in automotive engineering". 

An automotive company could hardly wish for better appreciation of its products. The "Uhlenhaut Coupé", as the car has been called by car enthusiasts since the late 1980s, is considered one of the most important icons of the Mercedes-Benz brand and also the most valuable car in the world. In May 2022, one of the two vehicles built in 1955 was sold to a private bidder for 135 million euros at an auction in the Mercedes-Benz Museum. The proceeds are used to finance the "Mercedes-Benz Fund" – a global scholarship programme that aims to encourage a new generation of schoolchildren and students to develop new technologies, in particular for decarbonisation and resource conservation. The second vehicle has been on display at the Mercedes-Benz Museum for many years and is one of the most spectacular exhibits there.