Mercedes’ SSKL Streamlined Car Ready to Roar Onto Pebble Beach
Rebuilt 1930s racing legend to be the centerpiece of Mercedes’ ‘125 Years of Motorsport’ at Concours d’Elegance in California, Aug. 15-18.
For as long as M-B has had a car on the road, it’s had another on the track scoring victories left and right. From the Silver Arrows of the 1930s, to the Sauber/Mercedes C9 of the late 1980s and the Mercedes EQ Formula E car of the New ’20s, the three-pointed star is always around to take home a top finish on the podium.
One of those cars will be making a big splash at the upcoming Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, in the form of the resurrected SSKL streamlined race car from 1932. The “missing link” between the supercharged behemoths of the Roaring Twenties and the aforementioned Silver Arrows is the centerpiece of M-B’s 125 Years of Motorsport exhibit at the concours, and is one of four built in 1931.
Designed by aero pioneer Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld and piloted to the top spot on the podium by Manfred von Brauchitsch in Berlin in 1932, the Mercedes was rebuilt with information gathered from a 1932 radio story about the car and historical documents archived with Mercedes-Benz Classic and Schloss Fachsenfeld. The car is a masterpiece just sitting still, but it’s about to do something it’s never done before.
On August 15, the Mercedes will be driven on the road for the first time, joining other classic Benzes for the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, where it will exercise the 240 ponies from its 7.0-liter inline-six along the Monterey peninsula to and from Carmel-by-the-Sea. After the drive, it will be parked at the Mercedes-Benz Star Lounge, surrounded by the likes of aforementioned Sauber/Mercedes C9, the Penske-Mercedes PC-23, and a replica of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, M-B’s first-ever car.
If you’d like to see the SSKL and the rest of the cars at the M-B display at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, it will be accessible at the company’s lounge from 9 am to 5 pm, every day between August 15 through 18, the same days as the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is open.
Photos: Mercedes-Benz
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