UNIVERSL APPEAL
Adoration for the long-lived R107 still only grows as it turns 50 – here 300, 350 and 500SL come together to show exactly why
As Mercedes-benz engineers laboured, with their typical thoroughness, on a successor to the W113 ‘Pagoda’ SL in the second half of the ’60s, not even they could have foreseen that the car they were creating, the R107 SL, would still be with us at the end of the 1980s. In all it lasted from 1971 to 1989; if you relate that period of time to popular music we are talking about a vehicle that reigned supreme in its class from the last knockings of Jimi Hendrix to the early days of Kylie Minogue. Or, if you are tuning in from Germany, from Klaus Wunderlich to Bert Kaempfert.
And yet, somehow, the older it got, the more desirable a property the Peter Pan R107 became. Annual sales peaked at 20,314 units in the car’s 15th year of production, and total output reached 237,287 (of which 156,000 were sold in North America) in an 18-season career only exceeded in the Benz range by the G-wagen.
The R107 was the product of a time when the very wealthy were fewer in number and had a much narrower choice of true status-symbol motor cars from which to choose. Factoring in its practicality, glamour and open-topped two-seater appeal, it stood almost unchallenged when the build quality of a Mercedes-benz was not a past-tense fable but a widely understood and entirely justified present-tense reality.
Longer, lower and wider than the car it replaced, the 350SL was the first of the V8-engined SLS, created in the interests of maintaining performance in the face of increasing weight. By the turn of the 1980s, bigger V8s would transform the R107 into a 140mph luxury rocketship, but the original 350SL of 1971 was quick rather than truly fast, with 0-60 in 8 secs and a 128mph maximum.
Its price-tag fully lived up to expectations. At £5600 it was nearly twice the cost of a V12 Jaguar E-type and £150 more than a Ferrari Dino, yet on paper it was hardly any faster than the likes of a Datsun 240Z or a Lotus Elan +2S 130. And its 16mpg thirst was almost in the Jensen class.
Daimler-benz AG had come to the conclusion that this was exactly the sort of sports car its customers wanted: a safe and civilised allweather luxury two-seater. It was really a grand touring two-door saloon with its hardtop on. Designed around power steering and automatic transmission, and built to the highest standards of fit, finish and durability to be found in a production automobile, it was not so much a sports car as a Teutonic Ford Thunderbird.
The Pagoda had proved buyers’ acceptance of the concept; the R107 updated it with an SL that was now more than equal to the looming crashsafety and environmental challenges of the 1970s. It was also adaptable to the engineering developments in the wider Mercedes-benz range: no fewer than six sizes of V8 were offered
‘Built to the highest standards of fit, finish and durability, this was not so much a sports car as a Teutonic Ford Thunderbird’