"AUTO BILD Sports Car of the Year 2012“: Double victory for Mercedes-AMG

Don't Copy From This Blog...

In a poll to determine the "Sports car of the year 2012", readers of the German motoring magazine "AUTO BILD Sportscars" put two models from Mercedes-AMG right at the top of the list: the Mercedes SL 63 AMG won the category of 'Production Cabriolets', while the Mercedes SLS AMG GT was the undisputed winner among the 'Production Super Sports Cars'.

173 candidates made it on to the short list in the vote for the "Sports cars of the year 2012". 72,475 readers of AUTO BILD Sportscars then cast their votes online for their personal favourites. And in two categories the result came out in favour of cars from the performance brand Mercedes-AMG. In the 'Production Cabriolets' segment it was the Mercedes SL 63 AMG that was waved through in first place by the chequered flag. The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT then tore across the finishing line ahead of the rest of the pack in the category of 'Production Super Sports Cars'.

The SL 63 AMG Roadster offers an impressive blend of systematic lightweight construction, outstanding performance and exemplary efficiency. Its all-aluminium bodyshell is complemented by a V8 powerpack with an output of between 395 kW (537 hp) and 415 kW (564 hp). It is a combination that provides the perfect prerequisites for unrivalled dynamism and an effortlessly superior driving experience. Also contributing to the car's outstanding performance are its AMG sports suspension on the basis of Active Body Control (ABC), a new AMG speed-sensitive sports steering system, AMG high-performance composite brakes and the AMG SPEEDSHIFT MCT 7-speed sports transmission. What is more, the high-performance Roadster manages to combine elegant design and a comprehensive package of standard equipment with a high level of safety.

The SLS AMG GT, available as either a Coupé or Roadster, is a performance-oriented GT variant of the already legendary Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, and exudes emotional appeal. Uprated to 435 kW (591 hp) and with optimised shift times and the new AMG RIDE CONTROL performance suspension, the gull-wing model is a true superstar among super sports cars. And thus ideally suited to take on important responsibilities, for example as the Official F1™ Safety Car during the 2012 season. As its driver Bernd Mayländer says of his 'company car': "The SLS AMG GT is the best Safety Car I've ever driven!"

* Official photos and details courtesy of Mercedes-AMG GmbH *

Copyright © 2012, mercedesgla. All rights reserved.

Read More

“60 years of the SL”: double victory at the 3rd Carrera Panamericana in the 300 SL racing sports car

Don't Copy From This Blog...

The 1952 racing season was a resounding success for Mercedes-Benz: in Berne, Le Mans, and at the Nürburgring race track, the 300 SL racing sports car (W 194) left competitors in its wake. With its celebrated double, triple, and quadruple victories, the 300 SL impressively demonstrated its sporting gene, which it passed on to successive vehicles in the SL series. The racing calendar that year featured a further highlight rounding off the season from 19 to 23 November 1952: the 3rd Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, one of the most gruelling endurance races in the world.

Flashback to the year 1952: the Carrera Panamericana adventure began in September 1952, with altitude tests on the Grossglockner mountain in Austria. It was here that the 300 SL was prepared for the high-altitude conditions that it would face in Mexico, where much of the route was around 2000 metres above sea level, with the highest point in the race, the Puerto Aires pass, as high as 3196 metres above sea level. Finding the ideal carburettor setting posed a particular challenge, because the individual stages of the race also featured repeated descents to between 200 and 300 metres. At the same time, the engineers were looking for more engine power for the 3100-kilometre race in Mexico. In the end, by implementing various improvements, they were able to boost output from 170 hp (125 kW) to 180 hp (132 kW). In early October, a large “expeditionary force” set off by ship for Veracruz, Mexico. As well as the three Mercedes-Benz 300 SL competition cars, the fleet included a further 300 SL model and a range of back-up vehicles.

The first of the eight stages, over a distance of 530 kilometres from Tuxtla to Oaxaca, started on 19 November 1952 at 7 a.m. precisely. Hermann Lang, Karl Kling and John Fitch all drew low starting numbers, which meant they followed one another at short intervals. It was during this stage that the now celebrated vulture accident occurred, when the 300 SL of Kling and Klenk collided with it (which some people say was a buzzard). Whatever kind of bird it was, it smashed through the windscreen at over 200 km/h, hitting co-driver Hans Klenk on the head, and leaving him with a bleeding scalp wound. The co-pilot briefly lost consciousness, but Karl Kling managed to bring him round by vigorously shaking him. Once he had come to, Klenk asked him to carry on with the race. At the stage finish, which, despite the incident, the two reached in third place, the vehicle was fitted with a new front windscreen with four vertical metal bars on each side for additional protection. The original vehicle is today an exhibit in the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

After eight breakneck and exhausting stages, Kling and Klenk finally reached the finish in Ciudad Juárez on 23 November 1952 in a time of 18 hours, 51 minutes and 19 seconds. Lang and Grupp crossed the finish line in second place, just 35 minutes behind the winners. With the SL double victory at the 3rd Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, Mercedes-Benz pulled off one of the most important successes for the brand in the 1950s.

The winning car today forms part of the extensive Mercedes-Benz Classic vehicle collection, and is exhibited in the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

Credits: Daimler AG

Copyright © 2012, mercedesgla. All rights reserved.

Read More

1962: Triumph for the Mercedes-Benz 220 SE in Argentina

Don't Copy From This Blog...

On 4 November 1962, after completing 4626 kilometres, Ewy Rosqvist and her co-driver Ursula Wirth emerged victorious in the VI Touring Car Grand Prix of Argentina (“VI Gran Premio Internacional Standard Supermovil YPF”) in their Mercedes-Benz 220 SE (W 111). The entire country excitedly celebrated the outstanding victory of the Mercedes-Benz women’s team in South America’s tough long-distance rally.

Prior to the race the two Swedish women had been derided somewhat, however by the end of the race they had shown the public and the competition what they were made of: Rosqvist and Wirth not only finished the race as overall winners, they literally dominated the gruelling contest from the word go. In 1962, for the first time, a single vehicle won all six stages of the Grand Prix in succession, and in doing so the two Swedish women also set a new record.

This victory not only caused a sensation in Argentina – the outstanding success of Rosqvist and Wirth took the whole world by storm. In addition to an appreciation of their sporting achievement, there was also amazement at the fact that two women were able to succeed in this exceptionally gruelling contest against a field of competitors made up exclusively of men.

At the start of the 1960s, top international female athletes were still very rare in many disciplines. This is confirmed by a report from the news magazine “Der Spiegel” dating from 1966, which portrayed the two Swedish female racing drivers, together with female marathon runners and other female endurance athletes, as pioneers of female high-performance sport.

Ewy Rosqvist was certainly no novice in the sport of motor racing when she set off on behalf of Mercedes-Benz in the 1962 Grand Prix of Argentina. Born in 1929 in Ystad in southern Sweden, she was the daughter of a farmer and learned to drive at an early age. Her first car was a Mercedes-Benz 170 S, bought for her by her father.

Working as a veterinary assistant, she gained a great deal of experience driving on long, poorly built roads: “The driving which I [...] had to carry out each day amounted to between 150 and 200 kilometres, almost all on unpaved roads, gravel paths and farm roads,” explained Ewy Rosqvist in her book “Fahrt durch die Hölle” [Driving through Hell] (Munich: Copress-Verlag 1963).

In 1954, Rosqvist experienced her first rally – as a passenger in the Midnight Sun Rally, which her husband and father were competing in. “That was so much fun that I decided to take part in a rally myself, or as a co-driver, as soon as possible,” the female driver recalled. And indeed – two years later, the young woman also found herself on the starting line of the Midnight Sun Rally. In 1959, Rosqvist won the European Rally Championship Women’s Cup for the first time in a Volvo. The then Daimler-Benz AG subsequently took on the successful female driver in the spring of 1962, as part of the Mercedes-Benz works team.

In the autumn of 1962, Mercedes-Benz sent a total of four works teams to Argentina, where in the previous year Manfred Schock and his co-driver Manfred Schieck had won the Grand Prix for Mercedes-Benz for the first time (the Mercedes-Benz team of Hans Herrmann/Rainer Günzler finished in second place). In addition to Rosqvist and Wirth in the 220 SE bearing the starting number 711 and the registration number S-LH 839, also on hand were Hermann Kühne and Manfred Schieck, also in a 220 SE (starting number 719), as well as Eugen Böhringer/Peter Lang (starting number 731) and Carlos Menditegui/Augustin Linares (starting number 703), each in W 112 model series Mercedes-Benz 300 SE models. Juan Manuel Fangio, the Argentine chief driver of the Mercedes-Benz racing division in 1954 and 1955, also accompanied the team during the 1962 Grand Prix.

The Stuttgart team under the direction of Karl Kling made use of the day before the start of the race to drive along the 4624-kilometre route so that the co-drivers could memorise the details of the course and make notes. During the rally, the route was broken down into six stages of between 515.4 and 863.5 kilometres. After setting out from Buenos Aires, it headed to Villa Carlos Paz, San Juan, Catamarca, Tucuman, Cordoba and back to Buenos Aires again. A one-day break was arranged between each of the race days.

A total of 286 cars registered for the Grand Prix, divided into seven different classes for the highly demanding event. Of these, 258 vehicles actually started the race but only 43 made it to the finish – less than one fifth. The other three Mercedes-Benz works teams also dropped out. A particularly tragic twist here was the fatal accident suffered by Hermann Kühne during the second stage.

Before the start, the newspapers still somewhat ridiculed the fact that a women’s team were setting out on the marathon rally through Argentina. When Rosqvist and Wirth chalked up a victory on the first stage, their success was soon praised as a respectable achievement. However, when the duo then also won the second stage, there was no more holding back and the Swedish women were wildly celebrated by the country’s media. The state of the nation at that time was captured in the German language newspaper “Freie Presse”, which was published in Buenos Aires: “It was not the Cuban missile crisis, but rather the two blondes from Scandinavia who dominated the headlines in the country’s daily newspapers.”

By the end of the Grand Prix, Ewy Rosqvist and Ursula Wirth had won all six stages of the rally. The pair topped the overall rankings with a time of 34:51:03 hours, more than three hours ahead of the second-placed Boris Stipic, and also A.V. del Carril in third place (both in Volvos). The average speed of the winners was 126.87 km/h – a new record. To put this in context, Walter Schock had won the previous year’s “Gran Premio Internacional Standard Supermovil YPF” with an average speed of 121.23 km/h.

The vehicle with which Rosqvist and Wirth won the race was a virtually near production standard vehicle from the W 111 model series. Mercedes-Benz had purposely sourced a vehicle with regular steering as this gave more sensitive steering feedback. Only on the difficult mountain stages would Ewy Rosqvist have preferred a car with hydraulic power steering, as she wrote in a report on her Argentine experience: “Today I would have given anything for a power steering system!”

The victory of Rosqvist/Wirth in 1962 was the second success achieved by Mercedes-Benz at the “Gran Premio Internacional Standard Supermovil YPF” in a row. And in the following two years vehicles from Stuttgart again dominated the competition, which was followed with a great deal of interest in the important American market. In 1963 and 1964, Eugen Böhringer/Klaus Kaiser emerged victorious in each case in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SE. In 1963, Ewy Rosqvist finished in third place with Ursula Wirth as co-driver in a 220 SE, and in 1964 she again secured third place, this time with Eva-Maria Falk in a 300 SE.

Did you know ...?
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the star of the Classic Calendar 2013. Under the title “Tribute to Art and Craft: Mercedes-Benz meets Mimmo Rotella”, the calendar merges 12 unique works with images of classic S-Class models in a new production by Monty Shadow. Available from October 2012 in the shop from www.mercedes-benz-classic.com.

Credits: Daimler AG

Copyright © 2012, mercedesgla. All rights reserved.

Read More

Mercedes-Benz 300 SL racing car: 60-year anniversary of the fourfold victory at the “Great Jubilee Prize” at Nürburgring

Don't Copy From This Blog...

The 1952 racing season was in full swing and the 300 SL racing car had already shown its qualities on many an occasion. In Bern and Le Mans, the Mercedes-Benz drivers celebrated important successes with their threefold and double victories. The “Nürburgring Great Jubilee Prize for racing cars” held at the beginning of August as part of the general programme of the German Grand Prix offered two innovations. On the one hand, the specifically developed sports car class for up to 8000 cc displacement allowed for two 169 kW (230 hp) Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W 194) racing cars with compressor engines to start the race. On the other hand, only open-topped vehicles were allowed to compete in the Eifel race, which thus led Mercedes-Benz to bring a Roadster version of the 300 SL racing car to the Nürburgring. The car was a true people magnet and it was to be the only racing appearance of the model in Germany. Three of the four Roadsters were created on the basis of already existing Coupés (chassis numbers 0006, 0007, and 0009). The part of the gullwing doors which reached into the side flanks thus became an entry hatch. The Roadsters were 100 kilograms lighter than the Coupés.

The vehicle with the chassis number 0010 was built completely from scratch and differs from the other three Roadsters in its slightly altered dimensions. The wheelbase was shortened from 2400 to 2200 millimetres and the track widths were also smaller than on the other vehicles. The thinner radiator grille, intended to improve the air flow around the vehicle, also allows for easy recognition of the freshly developed Roadster.

After the start, the spectators witnessed an enthralling battle, which nobody had really anticipated. During the first lap, the French racing driver Robert Manzon driving a 2.3-litre Gordini had already flown past Theo Helfrich and Fritz Rieß in their 300 SL racing cars. After passing Hermann Lang during the second lap, Manzon set his sights on Karl Kling in pole position. He managed to reduce his time difference from 20 to 7 seconds, but then succumbed to a striking transmission. Instead of a boring “Sunday procession”, the four remaining 300 SL models offered pure excitement: Hermann Lang recalled his old skills and closed the gap between him and his team mate Kling who was leading the pack. In his race to catch up, Lang achieved an average speed of 131.5 km/h, making it the fastest lap of any sports car on the day and even managed to overtake Kling. With his pole position at Nürburgring, Lang had driven his last victory in his racing career. Kling, despite a few technical problems, came in second, while Rieß and Helfrich rounded off the winning quartet with positions three and four respectively.

Credits: Daimler AG

Copyright © 2012, mercedesgla. All rights reserved.

Read More