Mercedes-Benz SL-Class (R107) 1971-1989

[Matt]

30 years ago: The SL legend revitalized

• Momentous decisions
• Roadster safety
• An immediate bestseller
• What we need is a coupe
• Sport has its due as well
• A legend or to be continued

Stuttgart, Oct 24, 2001

In April 1971 a new Mercedes-Benz 350 SL took to the road and captured the hearts of the customers. Powerful, self-assured and representative, it showed itself to be a well-proportioned roadster on all counts and was also given an equally successful, removable hard top by its designers. In addition to elegance and quality the bodywork had an aura of safety, for the crash behavior of this open two-seater was well ahead of its time. The first eight-cylinder to be in-stalled in an SL lay under the stretched bonnet.

Momentous decisions

Strictly speaking the R 107, which is the in-house designation for the '71 SL, should be called the '68, for it was on June 18, 1968 that the Executive Board took the final decision to build the car after a series of lively debates. These partly concerned the question of whether one should not turn the roadster into a coupe with a sliding roof, for alarming news relating to the safety of open-top cars was coming from the USA. This was a knife-edge decision which finally went the SL's way, as history confirms. The fact that a decision so important for the entire model series was reached in favor of a roadster with a removable hard top like its predecessors was primarily due to the head of development Dr. Hans Scherenberg, who fought for the idea vehemently: "The SL gave me great pleasure but also cost me a great deal of effort. We didn't reach this decision easily", is his summary of that momentous meeting.

This left the question of a coupe still unanswered of course. No decision was reached that same day, but background discussions continued on whether a four-seater sports coupe based on the R 107 should be produced as well, or whether a model designed as an "image coupe" might be feasible on the basis of the coming S-Class at a much later stage, almost the mid-seventies.
Karl Wilfert, the head of body design in Sindelfingen, had developed a coupe based on the R 107 practically off his own bat, and one day he presented this to the Executive Board as a "study". Meeting with initial rejection Wilfert exhibited his characteristic persistence and was finally able to prevail with his idea of a sports coupe, later to become the SLC - with resounding success as subsequent years showed.