The video below has unfinished business. I made it as part of a series for the Hilton Head Concours celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Mercedes 300 SL. It introduces the disappearance of a Mercedes 300 SL W194 racer, but I never get to fully tell why it may just be the best Benz mystery still out there:
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One of the largest elements that was hard to capture on video was the magnitude of this car doing a parade lap at Bridgehampton. Its siblings in the W194 family won at Le Mans in June 1952, and the picture was taken in May 1953. That means this was still the reigning champion. So just imagine being able to get incredibly close to the latest 24 Hours of Le Mans winner today!
The car shown in the video is chassis #004. That means it was the fourth car of the ten W194s made. Mercedes fans know it’s an early one because the hallmark gullwing doors don’t cut lower into the body like the later cars. Car #004 placed second at the 1952 Mille Miglia with Karl Kling at the wheel, and its last known official outing was at the November 1952 Carrera Panamericana (but it was just used as a parts/support vehicle.) Since that event was in North America, it’s not hard to imagine how the car ended up in the hands of Mercedes-Benz’s New York importer Max Hoffman.
Hoffman had opened a new Park Avenue showroom exclusively for Mercedes-Benz and made #004 a centerpiece. Since these cars were known for being stout, he also tested demand for a Benz sports car by driving it to events — including the 1953 SCCA National Championship in Bridgehampton, New York. This explains how the photo happened, but in the video, I didn’t get too deep into why or when the car disappeared.
The Bridgehampton photo came at a peculiar time. The W194 was the current champion at multiple events, but Hoffman didn’t have to be nervous about driving a valuable sports car because it arrived to him as a lame duck. Mercedes announced in January 1953 that it was devoting that racing season to developing its Formula One program, and the W194 sports car racer would not be defending its titles.
The demand for old race cars in this era is often compared to stale baked goods, and the W194 was fated to have a short shelf life. So spending time in New York as Hoffman’s promotional car gave chassis #004 a second act that other W194s didn’t get. However, the car’s relevance would be brief. The Bridgehampton race was in May 1953, Mercedes approved the 300 SL road car (W198) by September, and the world debut of the consumer car happened at the New York Auto Show in February 1954. Somewhere in that whirlwind ten-month time W194 #004 faded into obscurity.
The car’s whereabouts are now a mystery, and that means its fate is left to the imagination. Maybe Hoffman sold it to a startup racer, and chassis #004 is hiding under a fiberglass body. Or maybe it just got pushed into a back corner of Hoffman’s massive Manhattan service station where guys on their smoke break took home little souvenirs until there was nothing left. Or maybe it’s that tarp-covered lump in your grandfather’s garage that he just dismisses as, “Some old car.”
As a fan of a great mystery and a true believer in Mercedes-Benz robustness, I have to believe that some part of this car is still out there 70 years later — even if it’s at the bottom of the Hudson River. And what’s especially interesting is that multiple W194s got lost, and some never found… but those are stories for a different time.
Chassis #004 never finished at the top of the podium in its racing life, but it was a true link in the chain that advanced Mercedes to the now-iconic 300 SL gullwing road car. That’s why it deserves to have its full story known. It’s unfinished business until this noteworthy racer has its history (and maybe its body) made whole.
