From a series written for ABC Radio National’s Blueprint for Living. Mercedes Gullwing was first aired on 15th July 2023. You can listen to the audio here.

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What’s the most stylish car ever produced? It’s a question guaranteed to stimulate debate among car buffs but the Mercedes 300SL of 1954 would doubtless be near the top of any list. While the two door coupe has an undeniable elegance, its appeal lies mainly in the fact that its two doors are hinged at the top. Which is why this version of the car is known as the gullwing, given the doors, when open, make the car look as though it’s sprouted wings. There’s a touch of the aircraft in that. And it looks so fabulous that it makes you wonder why it didn’t catch on.

It wasn’t a gimmick, though, but a design solution. In 1952, Mercedes Benz produced a lightweight racing car, the sort used for endurance contests like the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans. It had a tubular metal frame which gave strength and lightness to the car body. An Austrian-born American called Max Hoffmann, who imported European cars to the US, thought there was a ready market in America for a road-going version of it and he told Mercedes Benz that he would take a thousand of them to begin with. And so, at the 1954 New York International Motor Sports show, the 300SL was launched (the SL standing for super light). The tubular frame, however, created an issue, as it cocooned the lower half of the car body, which was further strengthened by very deep door sills. These sills were set halfway up the body so conventional front-hinged doors were out of the question, as they’d require Houdini-esque skills to enter and exit. So Mercedes took their cue from a car designed some fourteen years earlier, the Bugatti Type 64. This vehicle had the sleek lines of an Art Deco sculpture, and it introduced a particular feature that Bugatti called portes papillon, or butterfly doors. These upward-opening doors added a futuristic touch to the Bugatti but the idea made perfect sense for the Mercedes. They made entering and exiting the car much easier, especially with a steering wheel that hinged out of the way. The car attracted huge attention, especially with its pioneering fuel-injected engine that made it the fastest production car on the road. It was too outlandish for some and it was soon joined by a convertible roadster that had normal doors and a simpler chassis. Some said it looked a lot prettier than its crazy sister.  

Mercedes has resurrected the gullwing idea from time to time, the link to the original still exerting a strong pull. Other companies have taken up the idea, too, especially with the arrival of ground-hugging supercars in the 1970s whose doors wouldn’t clear the pavement when parked. Some of today’s Lamborghini models, for instance, use a front-hinged arrangement called scissor doors that swing up and forward like a blade. Butterfly doors have been used by others, which swing outwards like wings, but are still hinged at the front. Nothing quite matches the unobstructed space a gullwing door offers.  

Car design often challenges us. For a while in the 1950s rear-hinged doors were thought of as sensible, even though they could blow open when the car was travelling at speed and anyone leaning forward to close it might fall out. Hence their name, suicide doors. And the single door at the front of the tiny so-called bubble cars of the 1950s seemed logical enough so long as no one mentioned crash safety. The gullwing solved a design problem in its day and still offers a reminder of great automotive design in action. Guaranteed to inspire many a debate to come.