The Crown Jewel among
all Sports Cars.
Prototypes are the products of an intense automotive design process. They are ideas given physical form and meant to test the culmination of those ideas. Most serve their purpose and end as scrap or become forgotten embodiments of a larger production that ends up relegated to a warehouse collecting dust rarely, if ever, to be seen again. Occasionally one is found on flaccid tires, fading away in a dusty, shuttered garage, whereupon aficionados immediately elevate it from “ancient junk” to “treasured artifact.”
Usually what is uncovered are the skeletal remains of a failed project, a curiosity at best. Once in a great while though, an opening door reveals the unexpected, a true prototype, the first example of a genuine success story. If that is rare, then finding a car that has served as a factory prototype three times over is is beyond remarkable. One such car that has conformed itself to the highest ideals in a vast field of prototypes that have graced the pavement is the 1955 Mercedes Benz 300SLS, a car first chronicled by famed photojournalist David Douglas Duncan for Colliers Magazine.
In 1956, Mercedes wanted to promote their new 300SL Roadster and so offered Duncan a new Mercedes Gullwing if he would take photos and write a story for either Colliers or Life Magazine.
Duncan was an intimate friend of Pablo Picasso and went on to write several books about the artist and his work. One such book, titled “Picasso’s Picassos” detailed the works of Pablo Picasso that had rarely been seen outside family and friends. In this book, Duncan chronicled these rarely seen works of Picasso’s that Picasso himself found to be his most important and best artistic renditions.
While doing research on the 1955 Mercedes 300SLS Protoype Roadster at the UCLA graduate research library, I came across an article titled “The Secret SLS” in Colliers Magazine by David Douglas Duncan. I proceeded to contact David in 1988 and after correspondence he was kind enough to send me the photos you see contained within this article for Classic Driver.
