Happy Birthday Mercedes-Benz SL (R 107)

Happy 50th Birthday!

Smoke silver and diamond blue, ink red and mother-of-pearl gray, petrol and anthracite gray: in these metallic paint finishes, you can look forward to a model at Mercedes-Benz Classic Car Travel that stands for stately driving like no other: the Mercedes-Benz SL type "R 107".

Fifty years ago, the Stuttgart-based brand's longest built roadster was presented. It came to a time when its noble predecessor, the legendary Pagoda (Mercedes-Benz SL type "W 113") had left huge footprints. But even more than its predecessor, the “R 107” has captured its own place on all five continents. It started with the type code: the "R" stood - for the first time at Mercedes-Benz - for "Roadster" , in the past the traditional brand had made do with fewer letters: "W" for all passenger cars, " O ”for buses,“ L ”for trucks. The models initially supplied exclusively with eight-cylinder engines were followed after a few years by significantly more economical, nonetheless easy-revving six-cylinders.

Mercedes-Benz itself described the R 107 in its advertising as a “comfort-oriented roadster”, as a “ balanced synthesis of sportiness, comfort and valuable top technology ”. This model is an “offer for drivers who love the vitality of open-top driving and see an automobile as an expression of an independent way of life” “without the stress that otherwise belongs to automotive sportiness”. Whether the last cited tip is aimed at Zuffenhausen or the “blue and white” is no longer comprehensible, almost a quarter of a million vehicles cannot be wrong, almost five times as many as were built by the predecessor “Pagoda” .

In the seventies, those who could afford it got on a plane once a year for a long-haul trip, but for the many smaller trips in between, people liked to start from the bungalow at home in the car. Those who enjoyed the privilege of doing this in a Mercedes-Benz R 107 experienced Ascona and Ticino, the Italian and French Riviera, the Alps and the Salzkammergut. Whether at the motorway filling station in Italy or on the driveway to grand hotels on the Côte d’Azur, the traveler was always accompanied by the good feeling of having a taste for the best and showing it.

With Mercedes-Benz Classic Car Travel we will take you back to the scenes of the youth of the R 107 for a few days . Experience, half a century after the introduction of this groundbreaking model, dream roads in the Provence at Lago Maggiore and in the Tuscany on the steering wheel of a first-class classic car and choose every day from our pool of vehicles ... the right color for your wardrobe!