ALL TIME
HERO

Mercedes-Benz
300 SLR 1955
Uhlenhaut

When the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Coupé was delivered to my studio in Wendlingen for the first time in 1983, I learned several things in the briefing for the photo shoot: firstly, this prototype was to have an unusual name, namely “Uhlenhaut” – after the test engineer of the same name and head of passenger car development at Daimler-Benz AG. And secondly, this model was not a normal SL and the “R” had not been added simply because this was a racing version of the 300 SL, but because the incredibly beautiful body concealed a completely independent model that had been created together with the victorious Formula 1 car of 1954 and 1955. Or more precisely, because the technology of this coupé corresponded to the sports car that had won the sports car world championship in 1955.

A racing car in which a driving legend such as Stirling Moss and his co-driver Denis Jenkinson completed the Mille Miglia in a record time of 10 hours and seven minutes and an average speed of 157.6 km/h, which was never beaten again. That was more than 100 miles per hour, which the team covered on a 1,600-kilometer route on normal Italian country roads – ten hours at full throttle, once from Brescia to Rome and back.

It must have been an incredible drive. Jenkinson later reported again and again about an event that he found particularly surreal: Stirling drove the Mercedes on a winding bypass road with such abandon that they overtook a twin-engine propeller plane flying over the same route in a straight line. And Juan Manuel Fangio, who had won the Formula 1 World Championship with Mercedes-Benz in 1954, tackled the 1,000 miles alone and finished second without a co-driver. Stirling Moss went on to win the Tourist Trophy with John Fitch and the Targa Florio with Peter Collins. This meant that the 300 SLR had won the World Sports Car Championship in its open-top form. The car became more and more exciting for me. But I still didn’t know all these details and wondered why this SLR was so important that I should photograph it now, and why it should be featured in the museum catalog that was soon to be published.

But when I first walked around the 300 SLR Coupé, I wasn’t interested in these details at all, because this silver object radiated a superiority that I had never seen in any other car before. And with every hour I had the vehicle in front of my lens, my respect for the object I was photographing began to grow. The shape seemed to awaken in me a kind of desire to understand the car better, to discover the secret of its charisma. Was I well on the way to falling in love with a car? Over the hours and days that followed, my respect for my subject grew and my commitment increased, I wanted to get the most out of its shape and appearance photographically. However, Mercedes-Benz had specified the exact position in which the car was to be photographed when the order was placed – from the front at an angle, exactly as the other vehicles were depicted in the museum catalog. I suspected that this image requested by the client would only do limited justice to the car, but an assignment is an assignment, and the desired image was created.

I still wanted to have the car in my studio for longer. In just a few hours and days, it had become the most beautiful car I had ever seen in front of my lens. As early as 1983, I developed an affection for this special 300 SLR that has not faded to this day. Even back then, something developed that is almost unimaginable for me today. After the work is done, each picture is given an archive number, and I also give a special picture a name. These are often quite succinct designations such as the special color or I create a reference to the owner. With racing cars, the name sometimes has something to do with a victory, a race track or things like “24 hours” or “1,000 kilometers”. But this 300 SLR with the nickname “Uhlenhaut” seemed to me to be something very special – I became more and more interested in the design, the technology, the history, and so I didn’t have to think long when I gave the car the name ALL TIME HERO back in 1983.

Perhaps that was a bit bold or premature, because many great vehicles appeared in the years from 1983 onwards: the Porsche 959, the Ferrari F40, the most insane coupés and convertibles from Mercedes-Benz, not to mention Lamborghini, Maserati and Aston Martin. Of course, I should also mention Bugatti. That was quite an announcement: ALL TIME HERO. And whenever I had the picture of the Uhlenhaut coupé in front of me, especially after 1989, when both coupés with red and blue interiors were already guests at shoots in the new studio in Leonberg, the name ALL TIME HERO kept running through my mind. But I knew without batting an eyelid: yes, that’s still the right name for this car.

It simply fascinated me to stand in front of a racing car that had never seen a race. A racing car without any damage, which had never had to compete with other racing cars – and yet clearly signaled that it had never shied away from a duel and would have won every race. Anyone who has ever seen the “Red” or admired the “Blue” in a museum will agree with me: No car in the world has this combination of emotional appeal and erotic design, paired with such a reduced line, without frills. Exclusively stylish elements are combined here in proportions that cannot be surpassed.

If I had to explain to someone what the SLR looks like, it would be something like this: You imagine the most beautiful gullwing – and then you stretch it a little where the in-line eight-cylinder engine is at home, i.e. the power. And then you think the hood is about twice as long because the car with its Formula 1 engine is probably three times as fast as the normal gullwing. Then you dispense with all the frippery of front and rear bumpers, you just have to get rid of them. What remains is pure sheet metal in perfect form. This reduction – owed to the racing car – and the perfect beauty that inevitably develops from it is then surpassed in emotion at the latest when the eight-cylinder engine is started, this experience and the acoustic experience can unfortunately not be described in words.