The 300SL Gullwing, produced between 1954 and 1957, is one of the most famous Mercedes-Benz cars. The company only returned to the idea of a production car with gullwing doors in 2010, when it introduced the SLS.
Of course, Mercedes used this solution in various concept and experimental cars such as the C111 and C112, but if you wanted a road-going Mercedes of the 1980s and 90s with gullwing doors, you had to go to the European tuners.
The likes of Styling Garage and Sbarro could have brought fancy lift-up doors to the big C126 (500SEC) coupe, but by far the best solution, and rarest of all, is the smaller but much more stylish Boschert B300.
The B300 was based on the Mercedes-Benz 300CE coupe from the 1980s. The C-pillar was moved forward by 250mm, and then the sills and roof were strengthened to allow the installation of 1,660mm-long gullwing doors, giving passengers access to both the front and rear seats.
The front seats were borrowed from the then-new R129 SL, but more importantly, the roadster also had a front end that matched the E-Class body just perfectly. Things got even more interesting under the hood, where a 3.0-liter inline-six V8 equipped with a twin-turbocharger appeared. It produced 283 hp, although this was still a far cry from the 326 hp the SL500 had.
And while the SL500 was expensive, it didn’t cost as much as the Boschert coupe. The B300 debuted at the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show, but failed to attract many orders. The company hoped to build 300 examples, but ultimately only 10 were made. Interestingly, only one of them, this original show car, had gullwing doors.
It recently underwent a restoration with a complete repaint and will now be auctioned at RM Sotheby’s this November. It is expected that 250,000–300,000 euros (25–30 million rubles) will be paid for it.
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