Watch Mercedes Revive a 1930s Mystery Supercar
If you like car brands with history, it’s hard to get much better than Mercedes. Hell, they invented the car after all. With such a long history there were several odd, interesting, and one-off cars created over the decades. Recently, a random chassis was found in some back shed somewhere, and nobody at Mercedes had any idea what it was or where it came from. They just had a chassis code and a tiny bit of metal from the original bodywork.
Of course, Mercedes is run by Germans, and the Germans are fastidious in their documentation and record keeping. It wasn’t long before they were able to decipher what car it might have been, and the results were amazing. This discarded chunk of metal was one of Mercedes’s most advanced aerodynamic concept cars from the 1930s: the 540 K Streamliner.
The concept was created to compete in a long-distance rally race. It was said to have a top speed of 115 mph, and it had an incredibly advanced aluminum alloy body. The race it was supposed to compete in was canceled and the car went on to live as a test machine for Dunlop tires to help develop their high-performance compounds. In the aftermath of the war, the car wound up in the hands of Americans, and its history gets cloudy from there. There is no word about how it made it back to Mercedes.
Still with such an impressive machine, Mercedes decided they had to rebuild it, and they documented the entire process. The video below is 45 minutes long, but Mercedes also made a trailer (shown way below) that is less than three minutes, so if you are in a hurry and just want to get an idea of what you should definitely see, you can check that out first.
Chime in with your thoughts on the forum. >>
via [Mercedes-Benz]
