Milestones of Motorsports: the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR
STUTTGART -- June 10, 2015:
1955 was the golden year of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. It enjoyed an
unprecedentedly successful run, comprising one-two or even one-two-three
wins. These outstanding triumphs assured Mercedes-Benz of the 1955 Worls
Sports Car Championship title. Mercedes-Benz Classic is now presenting a
new book on the legendary racing sports car, its races and the people
behind it. The text has been penned by well-known motor car author Günter
Engelen on the basis of meticulous research in the archives. This unique,
exclusive monograph is available in a limited and numbered edition and
represents the first volume of the new series “Milestones of
Motorsport”.
“The
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR is one of our supreme racing car icons”,
says Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and the Customer Center.
“I admire this perfect motor sport machine – as well as all the
people who built and drove the vehicle in the 1950s. Günter Engelen shares
this admiration, and we could not have found a better author for the
book.”
Born in 1938, in his capacity as an
motor car journalist, Günter Engelen has been concerned with the history of
the motor car, and Mercedes-Benz in particular, since 1985. Whatever topic
he tackles, he always researches the subject matter in hand with an
unerring attention to detail that lends the stories he relates a vivid
authenticity and brings history to life.
For the
new standard work “Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR” Engelen dug deep
into the Mercedes-Benz Classic Archive, compiling documents and information
to create a book that has the makings of an icon in its own right. The
Ostfildern-based Hatje Cantz Verlag publishing company is presenting the
book in fittingly exclusive style, including a slipcase. It is being
published in a German and an English edition, each limited to 999 numbered
copies at a price of 199 euros.
The
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR was one of the stars of 1955. In addition to the
Formula 1 World Championship and the European Touring Cars Masters, this
year also saw the vehicle win the World Sports Car Championship,
demonstrating Mercedes-Benz’s unprecedented and unchallenged
dominance of international motor racing. 60 years ago, Stirling Moss and
Juan Manuel Fangio, the most successful drivers of their era, achieved
impressive wins at the wheel of the 300 SLR in the world’s most
demanding road races, bestowing on this superlative racing sports car a
special renown which it has maintained to this day.
As Volume 1 of the new book series “Milestones of
Motorsport”, the book documents the technical development of the
300 SLR, which was allocated the internal designation
W 196 S, as well as all the vehicle’s racing assignments
and – for the first time ever – the biography of each
individual vehicle. It also describes the technical developments for the
following 1956 season, in which Mercedes-Benz did not compete, having
withdrawn from motor sport. Photographs and illustrations, some of which
have never been published before, high-quality graphic design, and a lavish
presentation make the book a collector’s item.
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Milestones of Motorsport,
Volume 1. Edited by Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz Classic, text by Günter
Engelen. Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, May 2015; hardcover,
256 pages, 288 photographs and illustrations, in slipcase, numbered and
limited to 999 copies in German and English respectively. 199 euros. ISBN:
978-3-7757-4000-5 (German), 978-3-7757-4001-2 (English). Available at the
Mercedes-Benz Museum shop and from
bookshops.