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 (8) 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, the classic American roadster of the early inter-war years.  Such was its allure, it was (apocryphally) claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times (NYT).

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.

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.  Lighter, more powerful and with a few aerodynamic tweaks, the SLS won the trophy.

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, 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 where most of the drop was booked and sales anyway quickly recovered on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frankfurt police officers examining Helga Matura's 220 SE cabriolet.  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$300,000 for original 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.

Crashed, California, 2005.

In 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 350 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.

Fixed, Texas, 2007.

However, by 2007, the car (California registration 5LZF057), repaired, detailed & simonized, was being offered for sale in Texas, the mileage stated as 6207.  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so all's well that ends well.

Apotheosis

Apotheosis (pronounced uh-poth-ee-oh-sis (U) or ap-uh-thee-uh-sis (non-U))

(1) The elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.

(2) An example of an ideal; epitome; quintessence.

(3) The highest achievement of a person or institution.

(4) The highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax.

(5) A glorified ideal; the realization of the apex or pinnacle (of a concept, construction or belief).

(6) In some Christian writings, a (sometimes blessed) release from earthly life, ascension to heaven; death; a technical synonym for the earthy death which precedes the soul rising to Heaven; the abbreviation in the texts was apoth.

(7) In psychology, the latent entity which mediates between a person's psyche and their thoughts (best known in the example of the id, ego and superego in Freudian psychology.

1570-1580: From the Late Latin apotheōsis (deification (especially of an emperor or royal personage)), from the Ancient Greek ἀποθέωσις (apothéōsis), from the verb ἀποθεόω (apotheóō) (to deify”).  The surface analysis apo- +‎ theo- +‎ -sis may be deconstructed as a factitive verb formed by the intensive prefix ἀπο- (apo-) + θεός (theós) (God) + -σις (-sis) (the suffix which formed nouns of action), the popular form in later Medieval texts being apotheoun (deify, make someone a god) and all forms were related to the primitive Indo-European root dhēs -, forming words for religious concepts which may have been an extension of the root dhe- (to set, put).  The verb apotheosize (exalt to godhood, deify) emerged circa 1760 and begat the inevitable apotheosized & apotheosizing, the extinct earlier (1670s) version being apotheose.  From the Late Latin & Church Latin other European languages picked up the word, the variations including the Catalan apoteosi, the French apothéose, the Galician apoteose, the Italian apoteosi, the Occitan apoteòsi, the Portuguese apoteose and the Spanish apotheosis.  Apotheosis is a noun, apotheosize is a verb and apotheotic is an adjective; the noun plural is apotheoses.

In the Roman Empire, apotheosis was a process whereby a dead ruler was declared divine by his successor.  Usually, the Senate passed a decree in accordance although, even at the time, it was often regarded a tawdry political trick by a new Emperor attempting to identify with a popular predecessor.  Time has not lessened the attraction for politicians and names like Reagan and Churchill are often invoked by those who'd like some of the lustre to reflect on them (although Mr Trump seems happy to mention only the more distant Washington and Lincoln).  Worse still was declaring divine a deceased dill: a work of satire attributed to the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 4 BC–65 AD) was The Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii (literally “The Pumpkinification of the divine Claudius”) which details the death of the Roman emperor Claudius and his judgement before the gods, the list of his crimes and failings so long that he’s cast down to the underworld.  Among scholars of Antiquity, there has been debate about whether Seneca really wrote the piece because among his many essays on politics, morality and philosophy, it’s the solitary satire and it’s thought he may have lent his name to give the piece some intellectual respectability.

Divas: Maria Callas (1923-1977), Chicago, 1955 (left), Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), Los Angeles, 2009 (centre) & Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (b 1981), London, 2018 (right).

An expired emperor's deceased loved ones could also be deified and posthumously, they were awarded the title Divus (or Diva if a women).  Classic Roman religion distinguished between a real god (of which the Romans had many) called deus and mortals defied through apotheosis who were called divus.  The label diva has long been used to describe highly-strung sopranos but in the modern age it’s applied also to pop-singers, reality-TV stars and the odd “difficult duchess”.  In Greek mythology there were mortals who became gods and many cultures embraced the idea, Hinduism by the million and most famously, until 1945 the Emperor was a “living God and the most honorable son of heaven”.  The three great monotheist faiths differ somewhat.  Islam is the clearest in that there is but one God in heaven and his greatest and final prophet was Muhammad (circa 570–632) who spoke through divine guidance but was flesh & blood.  In Judaism there is only one God and he has a special relationship with the Jews because of the covenant with them, the Jews believing (there are a few heretics however) that their Messiah has yet to appear on Earth but that day will come.  Christianity, predictably perhaps, is the most open to interpretation because of the notion of Jesus Christ as both earthy flesh & the second divine being of the Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit).  Thus, among Christian sects and cults which have come and gone, there's always been a bit of theological wriggle-room.

The Gullwing’s apotheosis

In the churning world of the collector car market, the ecosystem of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W198) is noted for the benchmarks set in the prices for which they sell.  They were produced as both a coupé (1954-1957) with the memorable gullwing doors and a roadster (1957-1963) and in the context of the multi-million dollar used car business, were actually made in quite substantial numbers, some 1400 Gullwings and 1858 roadsters made.  One quirk of the 300 SL has always been that unusually, it’s the roadster which has always sold for less, such is the allure of those exotic doors.

1963 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster: US$3.7 million.

Unexpectedly, the orthodoxy was almost overturned.  In 2018, a 1963 300 SL Roadster with just 1372 km (852 miles) on the odometer attracted US$3.7 million at auction in France, making it the most expensive roadster ever sold, nudging the record (US$4.2) set in 2012 by a 1955 aluminum Gullwing.  It was well above expectations but even apart from it being barely used, it was an exceptional example because it came with both the factory hardtop and soft-top (still untouched in its original shipping crate) and, as one of the few dozen made in the last year of production, it included the all-aluminum engine and the notable (and overdue) addition of four-wheel disc brakes.  Another thing which would have attracted collectors is that based on the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), just ten more were built before the line ended.

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (Weckerlé Alloy) : US$6.825 million.

However, the record didn’t last long because early in 2022, one of the twenty-nine aluminum-bodied Gullwings sold at auction in the US for US$6.825 million which does sound impressive but in what may be a sign of these troubled times, the bids actually failed to reach the estimates of US$7-8 million.  Long known as the Weckerlé Alloy because it was originally ordered by Joseph Weckerlé, the factory’s agent in Casablanca, the provenance of chassis 5500332 was close to impeccable, the 1955 car retaining its Sonderteile (special parts (NSL)) engine with tweaked fuel-injection and a more aggressive camshaft, gaining fifteen horsepower.  Additionally, it was fitted with the much admired Rudge knock-off wheels, the only deviations of note from the original Leichtmetallausführung (light-alloy design) specification being a replacement (1957) gearbox and glass windows which at sometime had replaced the thinner plexiglass units.  A newly trimmed, fitted-luggage set (something of a fetish in the Gullwing world) was also included.

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (Uhlenhaut coupé): US$143 million.

Trumping all these results however was a world-record which not only set the mark for Gullwings but became the most expensive car ever sold.  In June, 2022, at a private auction conducted in the Mercedes-Benz factory museum in Stuttgart, one of the two 1955 300 SLR (W196S “Uhlenhaut”) coupés went under the hammer for US$143 million.  The 300 SLR (W196S) was a sports car, nine of which were built to contest the 1955 World Sportscar Championship.  Essentially the W196 Formula One car with a body and the straight-eight engine enlarged from 2.5 to 3.0 litres (152 to 183 cubic inches), the roadster is most famous for the run in the 1955 Mille Miglia in Italy which was won over a distance of 992 miles (1597 km) with an average speed of almost 100 mph (160 km/h); nothing like that has since been achieved.  There's infamy too attached to the 300 SLR; one being involved in the catastrophic crash and fire at Le Mans in 1955.  The two 300 SLR Gullwings were intended to be run in the 1955 Carrera Panamericana Mexico but were rendered instantly redundant when both the event and the Mercedes-Benz racing programme was cancelled after the Le Mans disaster.  The head of the competition department, Rudolf Uhlenhaut (1906-1989), added an external muffler to one of the coupés, registered it for road use (such things were once possible when the planet was a happier place) and used it for a while as his company car.  It was then the fastest road-car in the world, an English journalist recording a top speed of 183 mph (295 km/h) on a quiet stretch of autobahn but Uhlenhaut paid a price for the only partially effective muffler, needing hearing aids later in life.  So the relationship to the W198 road cars is distant but such is the resemblance the Uhlenhaut coupés have always been thought the Gullwing’s apotheosis.

Metal

Metal (pronounced met-l)

(1) Any of a class of elementary substances, as gold, silver, or copper, all of which are crystalline when solid and many of which are characterized by opacity, ductility, conductivity, and a unique luster when freshly fractured.

(2) Such as substance in its pure state, as distinguished from alloys.

(3) An element yielding positively charged ions in aqueous solutions of its salts.

(4) An alloy or mixture composed wholly or partly of such substances such as steel or brass.

(5) An object made of metal.

(6) Formative material; stuff.

(7) In printing, as type metal, the stencils used to apply ink; the state of being set in type.

(8) The substance of glass in a molten state or as the finished product; molten glass in the pot or melting tank (mostly in technical use).

(9) As road metal, the crushed rock used in road construction; small stones or gravel, mixed with tar to form tarmac for the surfacing of roads.

(10) To furnish or cover with metal.

(11) In popular music, verbal shorthand for the genre heavy metal (but apparently usually not other variations (thrash; power; gothic; doom; twisted; black; molten; death)).

(12) In admiralty jargon, the total weight of projectiles that can be shot by a ship's guns at any one time; the total weight or number of a ship's guns.

(13) In heavy element astronomy, any atom except hydrogen and helium.

(14) In heraldry, a light tincture used in a coat of arms, specifically argent (white or silver) and or (gold).

(15) In rail construction, the rails of a railway (almost always plural).

(16) In mining, the ore from which a metal is derived (the use to describe the mine from which the ore is extracted is obsolete).

(17) Figuratively, the substance that constitutes something or someone; matter; hence, character or temper (now archaic and replaced by mettle).

(18) In the jargon of civil aviation, the actual airline operating a flight, rather than any of the code-share operators.

(19) In the jargon of drag-racing, a descriptor applied to the largest capacity (usually big-block) engines.

1250–1300: From the Middle English, from the Old French metal (metal; material, substance, stuff), from the Classical Latin metallum (quarry, mine, product of a mine, metal), from the Ancient Greek μέταλλον (métallon) (mine, quarry, ore).  The Greek work picked up the sense of “metal” only in post-classical texts, via the notion of "what is got by mining”; the original meaning was "mine, quarry-pit," probably a back-formation from metalleuein "to mine, to quarry," a word of unknown origin which may be related to metallan "to seek after" but there’s no evidence in support and it’s thought derived from a pre-Greek source because of the presence of -αλλο- (-allo-).  Metal is a noun, verb & adjective and metallic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is metals.

In the West, what defined a metal was based on the metals known from antiquity: gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin.  The adjectival form (or or covered with metal) emerged in the late fourteenth century reflecting the advances in metallurgy.  The term metalwork is attested from 1724 and has been used to describe both functional and decorative endeavours and is a common title in technical education (al la woodwork).

Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968).  An early heavy metal recording, their previous album was Heavy (1968).

The use to describe a variety of loud forms of popular music (heavy; thrash; power; gothic; doom; twisted; black; molten & death-metal (there may be others, it’s hard to tell)) began with heavy metal, the term coming into general use circa 1970 to describe a genre which had evolved since what came retrospectively to be called the proto-metal pieces of the 1950s such as Link Wray's Rumble.  As a shortened form, “metal” appears to be used properly to reference only heavy metal, presumably because it came first, the other forms almost always identified with the modifier.  The use in popular music seems to have been picked up from counterculture literature, William S Burroughs (1914-1997) using the phrase "heavy metal kid" in the 1962 novel The Soft Machine.  That was not a musical reference but in the subsequent Nova Express (1964), extended the use to a metaphor for drug use and from there, adoption in somewhere in popular culture was probably inevitable; it was the 1960s.

The lightness and heaviness of naturally occurring metals has been noted since pre-historic times, probably because of the interest in the malleability of materials which might be used to craft metal ornaments, tools and weapons and until the early nineteenth century, all known metals had relatively high densities, indeed that very quality of heaviness was thought a distinguishing characteristic which defined metals.  However, beginning in 1809, lighter metals such as sodium and potassium were isolated, their low densities demanding a definitional re-think and it was proposed they be categorised as “metalloids” but instead, that was reserved to later refer to a variety of non-metallic elements.

The term "heavy metal" seems first to have been used by German chemist Professor Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853) in an 1817 paper in which he divided the elements into non-metals, light metals, and heavy metals, based on relative density.  Later, “heavy metal” would be associated with elements with a high atomic weight or high atomic number and it is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “heavy element” although, two centuries on, there is criticism of the very usefulness of the now classical categories, the suggestion being they’ve become so diverse as to be meaningless.  Despite that, “heavy metal” in particular remains frequently used in both scientific and popular literature, the latter most often without any definitional rigor.  By comparison, presumably because their less associated with environmental pollution, “light metal” appears most often in association with metal trading, referring usually to aluminium, magnesium, beryllium, titanium and lithium.

The cosmological periodic table.  Chemists do at least agree on what metals are, heavy or otherwise.  Astronomers consider any element heavier than helium to be a metal, the distinction based on whether an element was created directly after the Big Bang (hydrogen and helium) or instead formed through subsequent nuclear reactions.  In the world of cosmology this is well understood but it can cause confusion among a general audience because it means elements such as carbon and oxygen are treated as metals, a most unfamiliar concept.

To astronomers, the production of metals is a consequence of stellar evolution.  Although metals lighter than iron are produced in the interiors of stars through nuclear fusion reactions, only a very small fraction escape (through stellar winds or thermal pulsations) to be incorporated into new stars.  For this reason, the majority of the metals found in the Universe are produced and expelled in the supernova explosions that mark the end for many stars.  This gradual processing of hydrogen and helium into heavier elements through successive generations of stars means that the metallicity of stars (the fraction of the mass of the star in the form of metals) varies.  Very old stars which formed from the almost pristine material of the Big Bang contain almost no metals, while later generations of stars can have up to 5% of their mass in the form of metals.  The percentage of metals in our star (the Sun) is around 2%, indicating it’s a later generation star.

When it comes to money, and not just with precious metals like gold, the choice of metal matters much; aluminum can become quite precious.

1950 Jaguar XK120 (chassis: 670165 (aluminum body))

Jaguar went to the 1948 London Motor Show thinking their big announcement would be the new XK engine, the twin-cam straight-six which faithfully would serve the line for the next forty-four years.  What instead stole the show was the test-bed, the roadster in which it was installed.  It was a sensation, the reaction convincing Jaguar's management to put it into production as the XK120.  However, tooling-up a production-line, even for a relatively low-volume sports car, takes time so the first 242 XK120s were hand-built with aluminum bodies affixed to an ash frame atop a steel chassis substantially shared with an existing model.  By 1950, the factory was ready for mass production and all subsequent XK120s were made with pressed-steel bodies although the doors, bonnet, and boot lid continued to use aluminum; the later cars weigh an additional 112 lb (51 kg).  All the aluminum-bodied cars were open two seaters (OTS (roadster)) and most were destined for the North American market, only fifty-eight being built with right-hand drive.  The most desirable of the XK120s, the record price for a road car at auction is US$396,000, realised in 2016.  Cars with a competition history have attracted more, a 1951 Roadster campaigned by the Scottish race team Ecurie Ecosse, sold for £707,100 in 2015 while the 1954 (steel) Competition Roadster that won its class at the Alpine Rally brought £365,500 in the same year.

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL (chassis: 550028 (aluminum body))

Intended for those planning to use the things in competition, the aluminum body for the 300SL gullwing was a regular production option, albeit a not inexpensive one although, given the processes required, it may have been a bargain.  Reducing weight by 215 lb (80 kg), the aluminum bodies were hand-crafted in the motorsports department in Untertürkheim and then mounted on the spaceframes sent from the Sindelfingen factory.  Of the 1400 gullwings, only 29 were built in aluminum, 26 of 855 in 1955 and 3 of 308 in 1956 so the option was taken-up only by two percent of customers.

Lindsay Lohan with metallic bags, London, 2014.

Adding to the desirability of the lightweights are the other modifications the factory made to improve competitiveness against the mostly British and Italian opposition.  Plexiglass windows, vented brake drums and stiffer springs were in the package, along with the Sonderteile (special parts (NSL)) engine with tweaked fuel-injection and a more aggressive camshaft, gaining fifteen horsepower.  Curiously, one option intended for use in motorsport actually added a little weight: the Rudge wheels, the seconds the knock-off hubs saved in the pits said to be worth the slight increase.  Available for any gullwing, the Rudge wheels are one of the desirable features, like the fitted luggage, tool kit and factory documents, the presence and condition of which attract a premium at sale.  For some years, the record price at auction for one of these was the US$4.62 million for a 1955 model, paid in 2012 for a car which in 1980 been bought by a German collector for US$57,000.  A new mark was set in 2022 at RM Sotheby's January auction at Scottsdale's Arizona Biltmore Resort when one crossed the block for US$6,825,000.