Heckflosse

Heckflosse (pronounced hek-flos or hek-floss-ah (German))

A nickname for the Mercedes-Benz W111 & W112 sedans produced between 1959-1968 (1961-1971 for the coupés and cabriolets with the pruned fins) and translated in English as fintail ("finnie" the affectionate diminutive).

1959: A compound word in modern German, Heck (rear; back) + Flosse (fin).  As a surname, Heck (most common in southern Germany and the Rhineland) came from the Middle High German hecke or hegge (hedge), the origin probably as a topographic name for someone who lived near a hedge.  The link with hedges as a means of dividing properties led in the Middle Low German to heck meaning “wooden fencing” under the influence of the Old Saxon hekki, from the Proto-West Germanic hakkju.  In nautical slang heck came to refer to the “back of a ship” because the position of the helmsman in the stern was enclosed by such a fence and from here it evolved in modern German generally to refer to "back or rear".  Flosse is obscure but was probably related to the Middle English and Old English finn, the Dutch vin, the Low German finne and the Swedish fena.  Because all German nouns are capitalized, Heckflosse is correct but in English, where it's treated as a nickname, heckflosse is common.  Heckflosse is a noun; the noun plural is Heckflossen (although it has in English texts appeared as Heckflosses). 

The (low) rise and (gradual) fall of the Mercedes-Benz tail-fin

Lindsay Lohan examining the damage to a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father, the impact suffered in a minor traffic accident while her assistant was at the wheel, Los Angeles, 2009.  More than many, Lindsay Lohan probably understands the value of Peilstege.

Chrysler in 1957 really did claim their tail-fins were not mere decorations but "stabilizers" designed to move the centre of pressure rearward.  Although designed during Detroit’s tail-fin craze during the mid-late 1950s, Mercedes-Benz always claimed the Heckflosse (tail-fins), introduced in 1959, weren’t mere stylistic flourishes but rather Peilstege (parking aids or sight-lines (literally "bearing bars")), the construct being peil-, from peilen (take a bearing; find the direction) + Steg (bar) which marked the extent of the bodywork, this to assist while reversing.  It's never been clear if this interpretation existed during the design process or was applied retrospectively in response to criticism after the debut but by 1960, even in the US where the things has assumed absurd proportions, the fin-fad was fast fading.  As a cultural artefact, the distinctiveness of the Heckflosse made them a staple for film-makers crafting the verisimilitude of the 1960s High Cold War, just as the big 600s (W100, 1963-1981) from the same era are used still when wealth or evil (not always synonymous) needs to be conveyed.

1963 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE Lang (Long) (W112).

Although on a longer wheelbase than the standard 300 SE, the model designation remained the same, the SEL nomenclature not appearing until the subsequent (W109) 300 SEL (1965).  The additional framing around the badge appeared only on some early-build models and was a unique embellishment although the 300 SE, by German standards "dripped with chrome".  The chrome trim attached to the tail-fins on the 300 SE and the most expensive of the W111 range (220 S & 220 SE) wasn't fitted to the 220 or the cheaper W110 models and in a quirk of production-line economics, it transpired it was more expensive (ie labor intensive) not to fit the trim because of the additional finishing required.  The alpha-numeric soup of model designations which proliferated from the late 1960s started as something almost logical (ie a 300 used a 3.0 litre engine, a 220 a 2.2 etc) but as new product lines emerged, anomalies increased until, in the early 1990s, it was re-organized although the new system would generate its own inconsistencies and eventually the number often had only a vague relationship with engine displacement.

Heckflosse assembly line, Stuttgart, Germany, 1962.

The Heckflosse was one of the first cars to include in its design the concept of the “safety cell”, a passenger compartment designed to protect the occupants in the case of impacts or roll-overs, the structures to the front and rear (ie the engine bay and luggage compartment) essentially “sacrificial”.  This idea was the ancestor of the modern “crumple zone” in which the front and rear compartments were designed to deform upon impact rather than retaining structural integrity, the object being to absorb and dissipate the energy generated in a crash, preventing it reaching the passengers.  The concept was not new, having for generations been a part of naval architecture, warships using what designers dubbed the “armored citadel”: a kind of “box” containing the vital machinery and magazine (ammunition), the structure created by the armoured deck, waterline belt, and the transverse bulkheads.  While this design didn’t make warships “unsinkable”, it did make them harder to sink and there have been ships which have had their whole bow & stern blown off yet have remained afloat, able to be towed back to port.

1961 GAZ-13 Chaika (Seagull) (1959-1981, from the Soviet Union, left), Sunbeam Alpine (1959-1968, from the United Kingdom, centre) and 1961 Chrysler Imperial Crown Windsor (from the US, right).  There's long been much comment about the Heckflosse's fins (only the factory called them Peilstege) being a unexpected concession to a styling fad but they do need to be compared with what was happening not only on both sides of the Atlantic but in Moscow too.

1957 Ford Thunderbird.  Fin-wise, the closest comparison to the Heckflosse was probably the 1957 Ford Thunderbird which, compared with what Chrysler and General Motors (GM) were doing at the time, was quite restrained.  Genuinely, the fins on the first generation Thunderbird (1955-1957) were functional as Peilstege.

On 1 October 1966, Heckflosses were part of the small motorcade in which, having served the twenty year sentences they were lucky to receive from the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), war criminals Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna 1940-1945) were driven from Spandau prison in Berlin.  The next day he boarded a Pan-Am Boeing 727 for a flight to Hanover, his first time on a jet aircraft because in 1945 permission had been denied (ostensibly on security grounds) for him to go on a test flight in one of the two-seater Messerschmitt Me-262s built for training.  Like many aspects of his life after release, the THF-HAJ flight had been planned while in Spandau, Speer particularly taken with the 727 because he'd so often seen it during its final descent while tending the prison grounds which he'd transformed into a landscaped park.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupé (1969-1971).

On the sedans, the uncharacteristic exuberances were left undisturbed until production ended in 1968 although after 1965, the range was restricted to a line of lower cost, utilitarian models.  The coupé and cabriolet were introduced in 1961 and lasted a decade; truncating the Heckflosse, they achieved an elegance of line Mercedes-Benz has never since matched but then, few have.

1969 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 (W109, 1968-1972).

By 1965, on the W108 and W109 (1965-1972 and which replaced the more expensive W111 models & all the W112 sedans), the fins, though barely discernible, still existed, the factory noting the contribution to structural rigidity, adding strength without the increase in weight the use of other techniques would have imposed.

1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC 5.0 (C107, 1977-1981).

Advances in metallurgy and engineering meant achieving the required strength became possible even without additional curvature in the metal and in 1971 the R107 (roadster 1971-1989) and C107 (coupé 1971-1981) debuted with the rear surface an uninterrupted flat plane.

1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 (V116, 1975-1980).

Despite that, a year later, the W116 sedans (1972-1980) were released with the most vestigial of fins.  The retention of styling elements between generations is not unusual, the second generation Range Rover reprising the earlier model’s distinctive hood creases, even though no longer a structural necessity.  Because there was uncertainty around whether US regulators would outlaw convertibles, no coupé or cabriolet version of the W116 was developed which is why a LWB (long wheelbase) coupé version of the R107 SL was released (as the C107 SLC) and the R107 lasted an impressive 18 years, not replaced until 1989.

1954 Chevrolet Corvette.

Almost apologetically, much has always been made of Mercedes-Benz in the late 1950s not being tempted to follow the lead of GM and Chrysler (Ford never really got involved) in making the W111's tailfins (whether they were really there to help when parking or were merely thought fashionable) truly macropterous but that doesn't mean Detroit may have influenced things because they also did some small "Heckflossesque" fins.  One intriguing element on the original Chevrolet Corvette was the use of protrusions to house the taillights.  When in 1953 the Corvette was released, the fins with which US cars of the era were to become so associated had been around for a few year but hadn’t yet grown (variously upwards & outwards) to the absurd proportions they would later assume and there was nothing unusual in taillights being housed in some construction integrated with the bodywork; once just “bolted-on” lens, taillights had become a design element.  What appeared on the early Corvettes are not really fins and are most analogous with the streamlined nacelles which appeared on contemporary aircraft as enclosures for jet engines; that aspect of aviation architecture would for years be a popular motif for the taillight stylists (by then a highly valued member of the team).  Despite that, the accepted term describing the sculptural extensions is “taillight pod”.  Interestingly, in some of the internal corporate memos the term “nacelle” was used but “pod” became the accepted standard.

1954 Corvette taillight (left) in pod with finlets.

The pair of small blades adorning the upper surface (although sometimes referred to as “finettes”) were in the documents of the GM Design Studio called “taillight bezels” or “ornamental finlets” and, modest as they were, the C1 Corvette probably was the first production car with “four fins”, those with them tending to fit them in pairs although, as a piece of biomimicry of aquatic species, some of the memorable inter-war and early post-war Tatras from Czechoslovakia had a single "central fin" running downwards from the rear of the roof.  The Tatra's fin (the concept familiar from LSR (Land Speed Record) machines) was there to enhance straight line stability and it was needed because of the car's configuration (advanced aerodynamics, a rear-mounted V8 engine and swing axles).  The fin did what it said on the tin but did little to alter the handling characteristics which, by virtue of the mechanical layout, could in unskilled hands be challenging.  The Corvette's behavior was more predictable but that didn't apply to the stylists (they weren't yet "designers") at GM and Chrysler who embarked on a process of “finflation” from which, mercifully, Chevrolet's sports car was spared.  Those on the early Corvettes were at least in a similar aspect ratio to those which appeared on actual jet engine nacelles where they were used to direct airflow in the desired direction and there would have been a slight aerodynamic effect (for better or worse) but the finlets were essentially decorative as GM’s memos indicated and similar additions even appeared on some dagmars (such as the 1954 Buicks).  The Corvette’s designers clearly though the moment had passed for when the restyled 1956 range was released, the pods had been banished, never to return.

1959 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible (left) and 1959 Pontiac Catalina Convertible (right).  Pontiac used the elongation of the elliptical taillights as a marker of a model's place in the division's hierarchy.

On the Corvette, the “taillight pod” and “ornamental finlets” combo didn’t make it into the 1956 range but the idea clearly became lodged somewhere in the GM collective memory because, on a grander scale, both were reprised on the 1959 Pontiacs; longer, higher and wider than the 1953 original, the look might have attracted more publicity had GM’s take on fins that year not been dominated by the Cadillac with the “twin bullet taillights” and the Chevrolet’s “bat wings”.  Compared with those extravagances, what Pontiac did was almost subtle and anyway overshadowed by two of the division’s more enduring debuts, the “split grill” and “year of the wide-track” campaign, the former coming and going, the latter lasting for more than a decade.  In a harbinger of what was to come (and ultimately doom Pontiac), all five GM divisions built their cars using the single platform of the GM B-Body and it was remarkable the stylists were able to achieve noticeably different appearances despite sharing the same structural core.  Whether the 1959 Pontiac's four finlets made them a more functional Peilstege than the two on the 1959 Heckflosse seems dubious although at 213.7 inches in length (5,428 mm) compared with the W111's 192 (4,875), drivers of Pontiacs would have needed them more.  Even a 1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II was only 213 inches (5,410) long and its bustleback had no fins whatever but many were chauffeur-driven so presumably “the help” were anyway good at parking. 

The Heckflosse as rally and race car

Mercedes-Benz 220 SE, Monte Carlo Rally, 1960.

To those accustomed to how things are done in the modern WRC (World Rally Championship) or have memories of the marvellous Group B cars of the 1980s (a category which enthralled everybody except the clipboard crew at the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation)) which, being international sport’s dopiest regulatory body, of course outlawed the things) it will seem improbable the Heckflosse would have been a successful rally car but the record was illustrious.  It’s best remembered for the 220 SE which won the 1960 Monte Carlo Rally but there were many other successes including the 1961 Algiers-Cape Town Central Africa Rally, an arduous event of some 13,500 kilometres (8400 miles) conducted over several weeks on a route from Cape Town to Algiers (a 190 D (a diesel-engined W121 “pontoon” rather than a Heckflosse) had won in 1959 which proved it was a rally which didn’t rely solely on speed).  First run in 1951 and based on an event staged in 1930, in 1956 a Fiat 1100 and a Ford Ranch Wagon V8 (two vehicles most unalike) had tied for first place, the latter driven by Elon Musk's (b 1971) maternal grandfather, chiropractor Joshua Norman Haldeman (1902–1974), who was an interesting character.

Mercedes-Benz factory rally team (part of the competition department, scaled down since the withdrawal from top-flight Formula One and sports car racing after 1999),  Acropolis Rally, 1963.

The most prestigious African rally was the East African Safari and a Heckflosse 220 SE won in 1961, following victories by 219s the previous two years. The 219 (W105, 1956-1959) was a curious anomaly among the post-war Mercedes-Benz saloons in terms of both nomenclature and engineering.  Using a “mix & match” approach which had been part of the transportation business even before things became motorized, the 219 used the 2.2 litre six-cylinder engine familiar in the various 220s (W128 & W180) but mounted it on the shorter “pontoon” platform used by the 4-cylinder 180 & 190 (W120 & W121) variants, the sacrificed length all accounted for by the shorter rear-doors (and thus wheelbase).  It was one of the more elaborate “de-frilling” exercises seen around the world, the variations including a lower cost version of an existing model (Citroën ID vs DS, Cadillac Calais vs De Ville or Chevrolet Biscayne vs Bel Air & Impala) or an existing body with a smaller engine substituted (Humber Hawk vs Super Snipe).  The 219’s designation was unusual in that it was the only occasion the familiar three numerals featured something other than a “0” as the last digit and it’s notable also because the factory, in a blatant attempt to evade the taxes levied on cars with 2.2 litre engines, slightly reduced the displacement.  The FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990) government must have decided this was “un-German” trickery (dieselgate was decades away) because eventually they informed Daimler-Benz the 219 would be taxed as a 2.2 litre vehicle,  This brought production to an end because the effect of the tax increase would have negated the advantage the 219 had enjoyed.

The winning Mercedes-Benz 300 SE, Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hour, 1964.  Note the absence of the chrome trim which usually adorned the W112, the same weight-saving measure not always applied to the rally cars.

Although not obviously a machine built for the circuits, the Heckflosse did win enjoy success on the track, a 220 SE in 1961 winning the second Armstrong 500 in Australia, the event which became the annual Bathurst 1000.  It was even less obviously a rally car but the 220 SE enjoyed a remarkable record in the Poland Rally, winning four successive titles between 1960-1964 and the car also won the 1962 Liège-Sofia-Liège, the factory taking the title in the same event in 1963 with the new 230 SL (the W113 “Pagoda”, 1963-1971).  The Heckflosse also won the Acropolis Rally in two successive years, a 220 SE taking the chequered flag in 1962 and a 300 SE (W112) the following year.  The 300 SE was very much a luxury model which used the then still novel engineering of air suspension which provided a smooth ride but added to weight and complexity, neither quality sought by teams using cars in competition although the system did have the advantage of permitting ground clearance easily to be adjusted; to compensate for the added mass, the 300 SE used a variant of the 3.0 litre straight-6 from the 300 SL (W198; 1954-1963) Gullwing and roadster, a powerful, robust unit.  However, by 1963 it was obvious the days of the big sedans being effective rally cars was drawing to a close; the greater power of the 300 SE had permitted the Heckflosse quite an Indian summer but the immediate future clearly belonged to lighter, more nimble machines such as the Alfa Romeo Giulia, Mini Cooper, Saab 96 and Volvo 122.

Ewy Rosqvist with 220 SE Heckflosse.

However, whether on the circuits or the rally course, there was in the early 1960s nothing unusual about men winning trophies but something of note happened on November 4, 1962 when two Swedish women (driver Ewy Rosqvist (1929–2024) & co-driver Ursula Wirth (1934–2019)), in a 220 SE Fintail (Heckflosse) won the VI Gran Premio Internacional Standard Supermovil YPF (Sixth Touring Car Grand Prix of Argentina), conducted over five days and 2,874 miles (4,625 km) on some of the country’s gruelling, mountainous roads.  The women not only won but dominated the event; for the first time, a single vehicle won all six stages and they set a new race record.  To rub it in, all other competitors were men.  Ewy Rosqvist’s only complaint about the 220 SE was that when driving in the mountains, she’d have preferred one with power steering.  According to company lore, the rough road and hot weather testing of one of the competition department's Heckflosses was conducted in the Australian outback (a good place to find both qualities) and, as test drivers, the factory sent with the car the Ott brothers (dubbed by the locals “Crash Ott” and “Red Ott”); the report from the two burly Bavarians assured head office power assistance was “not needed” because the steering was  “acceptably light”.  

220 SE Heckflosse with spotter plane above.

Working as a veterinary assistant travelling between remote farms, Ewy Rosqvist was brought up on a diet of twisty, often icy roads of dubious quality and it was on those she learned the finer points of rally-style driving, travelling sometimes up to 200 km (125 miles) in a day.  With animals to care for, speed was required (in her bag was often some “time-critical” bull semen) and she took to keeping a log-book in which she recorded how long it took to go from one farm to the next; these entries she regarded as her “lap times”.  Later, she would recall the “unpaved roads, gravel paths and farm roads” with some gratitude because they honed techniques which proved good enough for her to win several European rally championships; she called her memoir Fahrt durch die Hölle (Driving through Hell (1963)).

Argentine Turismo Standard Grand Prix, 1962.

Victory celebrations: Ewy Rosqvist (left) with Ursula Wirth (right).  Between them (in sunglasses) stands Mercedes-Benz team manager Karl Kling (1910–2003) who was a factory driver in 1954-1955, driving both the W196R F1 cars and W196S (300 SLR) sports cars.

Although Daimler-Benz was not unaware of the publicity which would be generated by having a women driving for their competition department, when in 1962 the factory offered her a seat in the Mercedes-Benz works team, genuinely the appointment was on merit and with what was achieved in South America, she justified her place.  The team had appeared in Argentina with a four-car entry (two 220 SEs (W111) and two 300 SEs (W112)), the operation run with the sort of thoroughness which had characterized their Grand Prix campaigns in the 1930s & 1950s and, given the conditions encountered, it was just as well: of the 286 vehicles which started only 43 would finish.  Immediately the women made an impression by winning the first stage and they repeated the feat on the subsequent five, eventually finishing three hours ahead of the second-placed Volvo and setting a new record average speed of 126.87 km/h (78.84 mph).  Undeniably, the women were the most glamorous and photogenic in the field and they captured the country’s imagination, German language newspaper Freie Presse (published in Buenos Aires) reporting: “It was not the Cuban missile crisis [16-28 October 1962], but rather the two blondes from Scandinavia who dominated the headlines in the country’s daily newspapers.”

Roadster

Roadster (pronounced rohd-ster)

(1) An early automobile having an open body, a single seat for two or three persons, and a large trunk or a rumble seat.

(2) A horse for riding or driving on the road (archaic).

(3) A two-seater, convertible sports car.

(4) A sea-going vessel riding at anchor in a road or bay.

(5) In coastal navigation, a clumsy vessel that works its way from one anchorage to another by means of the tides.

(6) A bicycle, or tricycle, adapted for common roads, rather than for the racing track, usually of classic style and steel-framed construction (archaic).

(7) Slang for one who drives much or one who lives along the road (UK) archaic).

(8) Slang for a hunter who keeps to the roads instead of following the hounds across country (archaic).

(9) The pre-modern class of racing car most associated with the classic era of the Indianapolis 500 (1952-1964).

1735–1745: A compound word, road + -ster.  Road was from the Middle English rode & rade (ride, journey) from the Old English rād (riding, hostile incursion) from the Proto-Germanic raidō (a ride), from the primitive Indo-European reydh (to ride). It was cognate with raid, a doublet acquired from the Scots, and the West Frisian reed (paved trail/road, driveway).  The –ster suffix is applied to someone (or something) associated with an act or characteristic, or does something specified.  It’s from the Middle English –ster & -estere from the Old English -estre (-ster, the feminine agent suffix), from the Proto-Germanic –istrijǭ &, -astrijǭ from the primitive Indo-European -is-ter- (suffix).  It was cognate with the Old High German -astria, the Middle Low German –ester and the Dutch -ster.  Roadster is a noun; the noun plural is roadsters.

Roadsters, gullwings and courtesans

1920 Stutz Bearcat (1912-1934 and in the first season spelled Bear Cat).  One of the fastest and most admired American cars of the early era, the Stutz Bearcat assumed such a place in popular culture, it was was claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times (NYT).  Wholly apocryphal, the origin of the romantic myth is thought to be related to the Bearcat being a symbol of wealth, adventure, and daring, owned by the sort of chaps (such a lifestyle at the time was most associated with men although women adventurers were not unknown) who would likely anyway warrant an NYT obituary.

In the United States of the mid-nineteenth century, a roadster was a horse suitable for travelling and by the early 1900s, the definition had expanded to include bicycles and tricycles.  In 1916, the US Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) defined a roadster as "an open car seating two or three”, a meaning which endures to this day.  Despite the origins, use was patchy in the US with the word applied to vehicles as diverse as the front-engined USAC (Indy) racing cars of the 1950s, a variety of 1930s convertibles and the custom post-war creations otherwise known as hot-rods.

Two of the 1963 Kurtis Kraft Roadsters which ran at the 1963 Indianapolis 500.  Car 56 (Jim Hurtubise (1932–1989)) qualified 3^rd (150.257 mph (241.815 km/h)) but retired on lap 102 after suffering an oil leak.  Car 75 (Art Malone (1936–2013)) qualified 25^th (148.343 (238.735 km/h)) but retired on lap 18 with clutch failure.

Both Kurtis Kraft Roadsters used the supercharged, double overhead camshaft (DOHC) Novi V8 (167–183 cubic inch (2.7–3.0 litres)) which appeared on the Indy 500 grid between 1941-1966.  The Novi was famous for the howl it produced at full cry but it never achieved its potential because chassis and tyre technology didn’t advance to the point its prodigious power could successfully be handled, the adoption of an all-wheel-drive (AWD) platform (then still referred to as four-wheel-drive (4WD) which now is usually reserved for vehicles which claim some off-road capability) coming too late.  The Novi V8 and is sometimes compared to the 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) BRM V16, another charismatic, supercharged, small displacement engine with a narrow power band.  The unusual fin on car 75 was an attempt to improve straight-line stability, an approach often used in the era before the implications of down-force fully were understood.

The Indy folklore is the adoption of the term “roadster” to describe the final era of the front-engined cars was the result of an act of subterfuge.  What defined the “Indy Roadster” was the engine and drive shaft being offset from the center-line of the car, something which allowed the driver to sit lower in the chassis thereby optimizing the weight distribution for use on (anti-clockwise) oval tracks.  It was in 1952 quite an innovation and the legend is that whenever there were visitors in their workshop, the Kurtis team covered the chassis with a tarpaulin and if asked, casually dismissed what lay beneath as “just our roadster” (then a common term for a “hot rod”, a hobby which became popular in the post-war years).  The name stuck when the car appeared, the design for a decade the dominant configuration in open-wheel oval racing although the writing was on the wall in 1961 when Jack Brabham (1926–2014) appeared at the brickyard in an under-powered mid-engined Cooper Climax which, although out-paced by the roadsters on the straights, posted competitive times because of its superior speed in the curves.  After that, the end of the roadster era came quickly and by 1965 one could manage to finish only as high as fifth, the last appearance at Indianapolis coming in 1968 when Jim Hurtubise’s Mallard retired after nine laps with a dropped piston (something as serious as it sounds).

1954 Jaguar XK120s: Roadster (open two-seater (OTS) in the UK and certain export markets; left) and Drop Head Coupé (DHC; right).  The roadsters were lighter and intended as dual-purpose vehicles which could be road-registered, driven to circuits and with relatively few changes be immediately competitive in racing.  The DHCs were based on the heavier, more luxuriously trimmed Fixed Head Coupé (FHC) coachwork while the roadsters featured cutaway doors without external handles or side windows and a removable windscreen.  Variations on this pre-war pattern was common in the British and parts of the European industry; even the early Chevrolet Corvettes were true roadsters.  

In pre-war Europe (though less so in the UK where “sports-car” or “open two seater” tended to be preferred), roadsters were often those with most rakish or flamboyant bodies, offered either by the factory or outside coachbuilders.  After the war, the term came to be restricted to what were once known as sports cars, the smaller, lighter and most overtly sporty of the line.  British manufacturers also distinguished, within a line of convertible two-seaters between lightweight roadsters and the more lavishly equipped drop-head coupés (DHC) which had features such a full-doors and side windows, neither always fitted to roadsters.  Interestingly, the early Jaguar XK120s and 140s (1949-1957) were marketed as open two-seaters (OTS) in UK and roadsters in the US, the home market not adopting the export nomenclature until the XK150 in 1958.

Lamborghini Miura Roadster in metallic blue over white leather.

The modern convention is to distinguish between a roadster (with a roof which wholly can be removed or folded back) and a targa (with a removable panel about the seats (a cat with left & right panels being a “T-top”)) but in what now seems a linguistic quirk, Lamborghini in 1968 displayed a (sort of) targa it called a Roadster.  It would be the only convertible Miura of any type the factory would build.  Although the P400 Miura's rolling chassis had generated much interest (and some scepticism from engineers who understood the implications of installing its mid-mounted V12 engine transversely) when displayed at the 1965 Turin Auto Show, when a pre-production prototype was used for the car’s debut at the Geneva show, it created as much of a sensation as the Jaguar E-Type (XKE, 1961-1974) arrival in the same city half-a-decade earlier.  The Miura is the spiritual ancestor of the “supercars” and “hypercars” of recent decades but while undeniably beautiful, at high-speed (it could exceed 170 mph (275 km/h)) the aerodynamic properties were dubious and the transverse engine induced handling quirks even experts found challenging to master.  Still, with close to 800 made over three series (P400, 1966-1968; P400 S, 1968-1971; P400 SV 1971-1973), it was a great success and the most desirable are now multi-million dollar machines.  It was quite an achievement for a concern which between 1948-1963 had built only well-regarded tractors and although the Miura wasn’t the company’s first car, it was the one which gained the marque the credibility to ranked with Ferrari and indeed greatly it influenced the mid-engined Ferraris and Maseratis of the 1970s as well as encouraging lower-cost imitators such as De Tomaso’s Mangusta (1967-1971).

Lamborghini Miura Roadster in metallic blue over white leather.

Perhaps counterintitutively the sensuous Miura was named after a breed of bull but it was one prized in bullfighting for its aggressive qualities so one can see the connection.  While a few claim to be cooks who helped stir the broth, the Miura’s lovely lines usually are credited to Marcello Gandini (1938–2024), a designer working at Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone’s (1914-1997) Turin-based Carrozzeria Bertone.  The one-off Miura roadster wasn’t exactly the first mid-engined coupé in a targa configuration, Ford building in 1965 five such GT40s (1964-1969) but these were pure racing cars and the first appeared a few weeks before Porsche in 1965 released the 911 Targa so it’s not surprising Ford dubbed the things “roadsters”.  The Fords were actually rolling test-beds for components and featured a number of differences from the more numerous coupés but nor was the Miura Roadster simply a coupé pulled from the assembly line and then de-roofed.  What Bertone did was a significant re-engineering, the roofline lowered by 30 mm (1¼ inches) with the rollover hoop lowered to reduce drag, the angle off the windscreen made more acute and the rear bodywork re-shaped with larger air-intakes for the V12, a more pronounced spoiler fitted to the rear deck, the tail-pipes re-routed and revised taillights were fitted.  Unseen were structural changes which reinforced the chassis, the box-section side members strengthened to compensate for the loss of rigidity created by removing the roof.  Inside, there were detail changes to the trim and switchgear.

Bertone’s Lamborghini Miura Roadster, Brussels Salon de L’Automobile, January 1968. Young ladies adorning exhibits were once a fixture at motor shows and this bevy was more fully clothed than many.

The reaction when the roadster was displayed at Brussels was little less enthusiastic than at Geneva two years earlier and dealers and the factory at once received enquiries about price and delivery dates.  Unfortunately, what the designers knew was that stunning though it looked, what the roofectomy had done was so compromise the structural rigidity that not even the strengthening done to the platform had been enough to make the Roadster a viable production car.  To achieve that, the whole shell would have had to be re-engineered and Lamborghini’s engineers knew that though achingly lovely, the shape and the transverse mounting of the V12 which made it possible were both flawed concepts and the future lay in longitudinally-positioned power-plants within an angular wedge.  Those conclusions would be rendered in physical form when the prototype Countach appeared at Geneva in 1971 and its lines can be seen still in twenty-first century Lamborghinis.

The ILZRO’s ZN 75 in iridescent green over tan leather.  The delightful “eyelashes” above the Miura's headlights unfortunately didn't appear on the P400 SV.

So the Roadster was destined to be a one-off curiosity but the show car subsequently had an interesting life.  In 1969 it was purchased by the New York-based ILZRO (International Lead Zinc Research Organization) which wanted something eye-catching with which to promote the use of the metals in automotive use.  Renamed ZN 75, it became a demonstration platform for zinc and lead applications in automotive engineering; it was repainted in an iridescent green, and various components were recast in zinc and lead-alloys, including trim, bumpers and even engine parts.  On the periodic table, the chemical element zinc has the symbol “Zn” while the “75” was a reference to 1975, the year the ILZRO and other industry groups were lobbying the regulators to set as the date by which new automotive materials and corrosion-resistance standards would become widespread.  The ILZRO’s campaign emphasis was on galvanization and anti-corrosion technologies, with the argument that by the mid-1970s, manufacturers would need extensively and more systematically to use zinc and such to meet with expectations of durability and comply with legislative dictate.  During the 1970s, was shown around North America, Europe, and Asia becoming one of the more widely seen Miuras and decades later, was restored to its original appearance.  Whether it even should be referred to as a targa is debatable because Bertone didn’t include a removable roof panel but over the years some Miuras have been converted to targas (with a removable panel) so the pedants can designate the original roadster as being “in the targa style”.   

300 SL gullwing (1954-1957)

Although the public found them glamorous, the engineers at Mercedes-Benz had never been enamored by the 300 SL’s gullwing doors, regarding them a necessary compromise imposed by the high side-structure of the spaceframe which supported the body.  Indeed, the doors had never been intended for use on road-cars, appearing first on the original (W194) 300SL, ten of which were built to contest sports-car racing in 1952.  The W194 had a good season, the most famous victory a 1-2 finish in the 24 Heures du Mans (24 Hours of Le Mans) and this success, along with the exotic lines, attracted the interest of the factory’s US importer who guaranteed the sale of a thousand coupés, essentially underwriting the profitability of full-scale road-car production.  The sales predictions proved accurate and between 1954-1957, 1400 (W198) 300 SL gullwings were built, some eighty percent of which were delivered to North American buyers.  Curiously, at the time, Mercedes-Benz never publicly disclosed what the abbreviation "SL" stood for.  The assumption had long been it meant Sport Light (Sport Leicht), based presumably on the SSKL of 1929-1931 (Super Sport Kurz (short) Leicht) but the factory documentation for decades used both Sport Leicht and Super Leicht.  It was only in 2017 it published a 1952 paper discovered in the corporate archive confirming the correct name is Super Leicht.

300 SL Roadster (1957-1963)

 

That the sales reached the numbers hoped was good because the gullwing was expensive to produce and a certain volume was required to achieve profitability but by 1956, sales were falling.  At that time the US distributer was suggesting there was greater demand for a convertible so the decision was taken to replace the gullwing with a roadster, production of which began in 1957, lasting until 1963 by which time 1858 had been built.  Now with conventional front-hinged doors made possible by a re-design of the tubular frame, the opportunity was taken also to include some improvements, most notably a more powerful engine and the incorporation of low-pivot swing axles in the rear suspension.  The rear axle changes, lowering the pivot-point to 87mm (3.4 inches) below the differential centre-line did reduce the camber changes which could be extreme if cornering was undertaken in an inexpert manner but the tendency was never entirely overcome.  The swing axles, much criticized in later years, need to be understood in the context of their times, the tyres of the 1950s offering nothing like the grip of more modern rubber although it is remains regrettable the factory didn't, for its high-performance road cars, adopt the de Dion rear suspension it used on both road and competition cars during the 1930s.  Although manageable in expert hands, as the Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers in 1954-1955 proved, the more predictable de Dion would likely have been better suited to most drivers on the roads.  In fairness, the gullwing’s rear suspension did behave better than many of the more primitive swing-axle systems used by other manufacturers but it needed to given that in any given situation, the Mercedes would likely be travelling a deal faster.  Remarkably, the Mercedes-Benz swing-axle arrangement lasted well into the age of the radial-ply tyre, in volume production until 1972 and used until 1981 on the handful of 600 Grossers built every year.

300 SLS (1957)

Less costly to build than the gullwing, a few hundred 300 SL roadsters were sold annually, the price tag reaching even higher in the stratospheric realm.  Unlike the lighter gullwing, the emphasis shifted from a dual-purpose vehicle suited to both road and track to one that was more of a grand-tourer.  The factory however managed to give the car one last fling at competition.  The SCCA (Sports Car Club of America), tired of the gullwing’s domination in the production sports car category, changed the rules to render it uncompetitive and, as the new roadster hadn’t yet achieved the volume needed to qualify for homologation, Mercedes-Benz built a new model: called the 300 SLS (Super Light Sport), two built to contest the SCCA’s modified production class.  Much lighter, slightly more powerful and with a few aerodynamic tweaks, the SLS won the trophy.

As a footnote (one to be noted only by the subset of word nerds who delight in the details of nomenclature), for decades, it was said by many, even normally reliable sources, that SL stood for sports Sports Leicht (sports light) and the history of the Mercedes-Benz alphabet soup was such that it could have gone either way (the SSKL (1929) was the Super Sports Kurz (short) Leicht (light) and from the 1950s on, for the SL, even the factory variously used Sports Leicht and Super Leicht.  It was only in 2017 it published a 1952 paper (unearthed from the corporate archive) confirming the correct abbreviation is Super Leicht.  Sports Leicht Rennsport (Sport Light Racing) seems to be used for the the SLRs because they were built as pure race cars, the W198 and later SLs being road cars but there are references also to Super Leicht Rennsport.  By implication, that would suggest the original 300SL (the 1951 W194) should have been a Sport Leicht because it was built only for competition but given the relevant document dates from 1952, it must have been a reference to the W194 which is thus also a Sport Leicht.  Further to muddy the waters, in 1957 the two lightweight cars based on the new 300 SL Roadster (1957-1963) for use in US road racing were (at the time) designated 300 SLS (Sports Leicht Sport), the occasional reference (in translation) as "Sports Light Special" not supported by any evidence.  The best quirk of the SLS tale however is the machine which inspired the model was a one-off race-car built by Californian coachbuilder ("body-man" in the vernacular of the West Coast hot rod community) Chuck Porter (1915-1982).  Porter's SLS was built on the space-fame of a wrecked 300 SL gullwing (purchased for a reputed US$500) and followed the lines of the 300 SLR roadsters as closely as the W198 frame (taller than that of the W196S) allowed.  Although it was never an "official" designation, Porter referred to his creation as SL-S, the appended "S" standing for "scrap". 

Job done, the factory withdrew from circuit racing although private teams would continue to campaign 300 SLs into the 1970s.  The road-going version continued with little visual change until 1963 although the engineering refinements continued as running changes, disk brakes adopted in 1961, the last few dozen built with a lighter aluminum engine block replacing the cast-iron casting.  When retired, it wasn’t replaced, the W113 (pagoda) and their successors (R107) roadsters a different interpretation of the genre.  It would be decades before Mercedes-Benz would again offer anything like the 300 SL.

190 SL (1955-1963)

The reception afforded the 300 SL prompted the US distributor to suggest a lower cost sports car would also be well-received.  The economics of that dictated the exotic features of the gullwing (dry-sump lubrication, the doors, fuel-injection) couldn’t be used so the factory instead grafted attractive roadster coachwork atop a shortened saloon car platform, the pedestrian four-cylinder engine barely more powerful than when found in its prosaic donor.  Still, the 190 SL (W121) looked the part and could be sold for well under half the price of a gullwing though even then it was hardly cheap, costing a third more than a Chevrolet Corvette and by then the Corvette had been transformed into a most estimable roadster with the addition of the new Chevrolet 265 cubic inch (4.3 litre) small-block V8.  Pleasingly profitable, nearly twenty-six thousand 190 SLs were built over an eight-year run beginning in 1955 and there were even plans for a 220 SL, using the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) straight-six from the “pontoon” saloon range (W120-121-105-128-180; 1953-1963) which had provided the roadster's platform.  Prototypes were built and testing confirmed they were production-ready but the continuing success of the 190 SL and capacity constraints first postponed and finally doomed the project.  After production ceased in 1962 (none were built in 1963 but the factory listed the final 104 cars as 1963 models), it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that the concept of a smaller roadster (the R170 SLK) to run alongside the (R129) SL was revived although, since the early 1970s, the SL (R107) had simultaneously been available with engines of different sizes and accordingly placed price-points.

190 SL Rennsport, Macau Grand Prix, 1957.

Though never designed with competition in mind, the factory did construct half a dozen higher-performance Rennsport (motor-racing) packages (referred to internally as the 190 SLR), the most important aspect of which was diet, the weight-reduction achieved with aluminium doors, a smaller Perspex windscreen and the deletion of non-essential items such as the soft top, sound insulation, the heater (they're surprisingly weighty devices) and bumpers.  Although never part of a major racing campaign, it did enjoy success including a class win in a sports car event at Morocco and victory in the 1957 Macau Grand Prix.

Last of the Adenauers: 300d (W189, 1957-1962) Cabriolet D (upper) & the "standard" 300d saloon (four-door hardtop).

Although some of its customers during the mid-twentieth-century (notably between 1933-1945) are understandably neglected in their otherwise comprehensive attention to history, Mercedes-Benz has always acknowledged and publicized the drivers and clients of the 1950s.  Their Formula One drivers (especially Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995) & Stirling Moss (1929–2020) were honored for decades after their retirements and Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, was even afforded the unique distinction of being the nickname for the 300 (W186 & W189, 1951-1962), the big limousine of the era which used a substantially similar engine to the 300 SL's unit.  Note that although the top image is of a convertible, it's a "cabriolet" and not a roadster.  According to Mercedes-Benz, a roadster is a two door, two seater convertible although, since the 1960s, the factory has sometimes offered the option of single (transverse) or conventional rear seat for occasional (and sometimes uncomfortable) use.  Small, these seats were really suitable only for very young children and no pretence was made that they make a roadster into a true four-seater, 2+2 the usual (generous) description.  Being Germans, during the 1930s, Daimler-Benz decided there were sufficient detail differences between the coachwork and hood (in the sense of folding roof) assemblies offered and formalized definitions of five distinct flavors of Mercedes-Benz cabriolets.

Fraulein Rosemarie Nitribitt with 190 SL and Joe der Hund.

However, in a fate shared with some of the most valued clients of the three-pointed star between 1933-1945, nor does the factory’s historic literature dwell on someone perhaps the 190SL’s best known owners, Rosemarie Nitribitt (1933-1957).  Fraulein Nitribitt was, by 1957, Frankfurt’s most illustrious (and reputedly most expensive) prostitute, a profession to which she seems to have been drawn by necessity but at which she proved more than proficient and, as the reports of the time attest, there was nothing furtive in the way she practiced her trade.  Something of a celebrity in Frankfurt, the republic’s financial centre, her black roadster became so associated with her business model that the 190SL was at the time often referred to as the “Nitribitt-Mercedes”, her car seen frequently, if briefly, parked in the forecourts of the city’s better hotels.  Unlike the contemporary connection with Herr Adenauer, the factory never acknowledged this nickname.

190 SL sales breakdown

The lives of prostitutes, even the more highly priced, can descend to their conclusion along a Hobbesian path and in 1957, aged twenty-four, she was murdered in her smart apartment, strangled with a silk stocking, the body not found for several days.  Given Fraulein Nitribitt operated at the upper end of the market, her clients tended variously to be rich, famous & powerful and that attracted the raft of inevitable conspiracy theories there had been a cover-up to protect their interests, a rather botched police investigation encouraging such rumors.  The murder remains unsolved.  It has been suggested sales of the 190 SL suffered because of the connection, the little roadster briefly attracting the moniker “whore’s taxi” and indeed, there was a decline in the period.  However, 1956 was the first year of full-production and a second-year drop-off in sales is not unknown, gullwing production for example dropped to 308 in 1956, quite a fall from the 855 achieved the previous year and while, at least in Germany, the association with the dead courtesan may have been off-putting for the bourgeoise, without qualitative data, one really can’t say.  There was a precipitous decline in 1958 but that was the year of the worst US recession of the post-war boom and it was in the US most of the drop was booked; sales anyway quickly recovered on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frankfurt police officers examining Helga Matura's 220 SE cabriolet (Hōchkühler).  Note the jackboots.

In a coincidence of circumstances, a decade later, Fraulein Helga Sofie Matura (1933-1966) was another high-end prostitute murdered in Frankfurt, the weapon this time a stiletto (the stylish shoe rather than the slender blade).  Never subject to the same rumors the Nitribtt case attracted, it too remains unsolved.  In another coincidence, Fraulein Matura’s car was a convertible Mercedes, a white (W111) 220 SE Cabriolet.  Despite the connection, the W111 never picked up any prurient nicknames and nor did its reputation suffer, the most valuable of the W111 cabriolets now attracting prices in excess of US$400,000 for original or fully-restored examples while German turning houses which update the drive-trains to modern standards list them at twice that.

Helga Matura (1966) by Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter (b 1932) is a German visual artist whose work encompasses glass as well as aspects of both photography and painting.  Although most noted for working in illusionistic space, some of his output has belonged to various schools of realism and he seems to place himself in many of the traditions of modernism, acknowledging surrealism, the primacy of the object and the purpose of art.  Of particular interest was his 1988 series of fifteen photo-paintings (18 October 1977) depicting four members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) (better, if a little misleadingly, known in the English-speaking world as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).  Created using monochrome photographs taken mostly before their deaths, the work was an interesting exploration of time, meaning and form.

His portrait of the late Helga Matura is representative of his technique in photo-paintings, applying the practices of the Fluxus movement to material not originally created as art.  Blurred and variously in and out of focus, it takes the entirely representational image of a photograph which is then disrupted; disruptions may be for the purposes of the artist, the subject or the viewer and indeed time, the nature of the work changing whether viewed with or without knowledge of her life and death.

Roadster off the road, California, 2005.

In October 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 400 (175 for the US market, 225 for the RoW (rest of the world)) of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a permanent fixed-roof.  A production number of 350 is sometimes quoted but those maintaining registers insist it was 400.

Roadster back on the road, Texas, 2007.

By 2007, the car (still with California registration plates (5LZF057) attached) had been repaired, detailed & simonized and was being offered for sale in Texas, the odometer said to read 6207 miles (9989 km).  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so it was thought all's well that ends well but once the vehicle's provenance was brought to the attention of the repair shop, it was realized the celebrity connection might increase its value so it was advertised on eBay with more detail, including the inevitable click-bait of LiLo photographs.  However, either eBay doesn't approve of commerce profiting from the vicissitudes suffered by Hollywood starlets or they'd received a C&D (cease & desist) letter from someone's lawyers and the auction ended prematurely.  It proved a brief respite, the SL 65 soon back on eBay Motors but with the offending part of the blurb limited to "previously owned by high profile celebrity", leaving it to prospective buyers to join the dots.  According to Business Insider, the car sold for US$111,000 which was much higher than would be expected for one which had been repaired after an accident, albeit it a low-speed impact.  The R230s anyway had a complex construction and the AMG versions added even more intricacy so although it is possible to restore a damaged AMG to the state in which it left the factory, it does require both expertise and some often expensive parts.  Because of that, repaired Mercedes-Benz AMG cars trade usually at a significant discount so the amount realized was indicative of the perceived value of a celebrity association.