| 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SLR kiddies version
In 1987 when I paid Stirling Moss a visit at his mews house in London we spoke about new ideas. He then asked me to walk up Park Lane to go and have a look at two half scale kiddies cars in a car showroom. They were a little Ferrari 308 and an open topped Lamborghini Countach, beautifully made and powered by Honda lawnmower engines. Price 10,500 pounds each, a great deal of money relative then to a Ford Sierra 2.0 litre at 12,000 pounds.
Harrods also had some kiddies cars, a little more plastic than the Ferrari and Lambo, but nontheless quite good. A Porsche 936 actually had the names Jochen Mass and Jacky Ickx on the sides complete with German and Belgian flags
Stirling said that these kiddies cars fascinated him and if we could build similar cars in South Africa he would be interested in becoming involved with the marketing and promotional side. Because of other business pressures the idea was relegated to File 13 and went no where.
In early 2001 Robbie Senekal and I were wondering what sort of after hours tricks we could get up to and I mentioned the kiddies car idea of 14 years earlier. I suggested that as the idea came from Stirling Moss perhaps we should consider his 1955 Mille Miglia winning Mercedes-Benz 300SLR, No: 722. Great idea said Robbie and I bought an 1/18th scale Burago model which we started scaling up.
Before we got anywhere with the project the new GT40 project popped up and from then there was no spare time for Robbie.
There was only one other person in South Africa who could do justice to the project, my friend Malcolm Duncan, in Johannesburg. Not only is Malcolm an innovative designer/engineer, who designed and built a Rotary type engine, but he's a complete Mercedes-Benz nut. He owns a 300SL roadster and about a dozen other classics as well as many Mercedes books and die cast models.
He also owns a unique piece of Mercedes-Benz history. In 1956 Paul O'Shea persuaded Daimler-Benz to prepare two lightweight 300SL Roadsters for US Class D racing. Bodies were of aluminium and four spare engines, with aluminium blocks were prepared. The inlet manifolds were of welded aluminium sheet.
Somehow in later years, a medical doctor in Johannesburg, who raced powerboats managed to get hold of one of these extremely rare engines for his boat. Malcolm now owns the engine of which pic follows.
When I offered Malcolm the 300SLR project he grabbed it with both hands. He also had a Burago model which he had digitised by the CSIR (South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) over 3 000 points. From the print outs the body profiles were made and then an aluminium body. Visually the car will be so exact that in a photo it would be difficult to tell it apart from the original car. Stirling insists that the steering wheel must be a four spoker as per the original. All the W196 GP cars and other 300SLRs had three spoke wheels but as Stirling preferred four spokes Mercedes race boss, Alfred Neubauer, had the wheel specially made up for him. Today it hangs in his study. Engine will be from a Yamaha Quad bike which makes sense as it has all the electrics attached. Malcolm wisely came up with the idea of a two thirds scale for not only will bigger kids fit in but Mini tyres at 10 ins are virtually to scale to the original 16 ins wheels. The pics below show only one head fairing but the production models will have two with Union Jacks on the sides as per the original. As Fangio drove alone in no: 658 his car only had one head fairing
As the aluminium bodies will take a long time to shape production of the baby 300SLR will be very limited. Malcolm is still figuring out how many he would be able to build in a year.
See attached pics.
Wish I had a rich daddy when I was a little boy!
Andre 40
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