Hemmings Classic Car – October 2019

This 280 SL reveals its French-market origin through the yellow

bulbs in its Euro-market vertical single-lens headlamp/turn signal/

fog lamp units, along with not having U.S.-mandated seat headrests.

Opening the trunk reveals a three-piece set of fitted luggage.

They didn’t

want any flaws

to show on

this car—

they wanted to

make it stand

out as special.

completed the Europa AM/FM radio, and the fitted luggage set

in the trunk that made this noted Mercedes enthusiast jump

into action.

“Look at the fenderwells. When regular cars were built,

they had spot welds along the fender line by the firewall.

The tops of the fenders were welded to the panels inside the

engine compartment, and whenever a fender is replaced, it’s

too much trouble to recreate the spot welds, so they’re filled

in—but these were the original fenders. That was the first

thing I noticed—those welds were filled in,” he explains. This

car also had flat metal plates screwed into the cowl, in the

door jambs, covering a row of typically exposed spot welds

that anchored the fender, below the windshield.

Philip continues; “Under the hood, the valve cover was

painted semi-gloss black, instead of the usual aluminum finish.

The intake manifold and lower heat shields were polished, and

the linkages and fuel lines were chrome plated. They didn’t

want any flaws to show on this car—they wanted to make it

with coil springs and an anti-roll bar in front, plus an indepen-

dent rear comprised of single-joint low-pivot swing axles, trail-

ing arms, and a transverse compensating spring.

While the interior’s bright metal and body-color-painted

dash trimmings dated the car to the 1960s, the final 830 280 SLs

built for 1971—total production for this model was 23,885—

still offered a modern driving experience. Mercedes-Benz was

already preparing the V-8-powered “R107”—chassis 350 SL for

its Spring ’71 debut, though, and that generation would be even

more popular and longer-lived than its predecessor.

So what was it about the Signal Red-over-Parchment-MB-Tex

car on these pages that caught Philip’s eye? This French-market

280 SL, bearing that country’s characteristic yellow headlamps,

had been presented to him in photos by a broker friend in

Belgium. Aside from a quality repaint performed at some point

in the car’s history, it was untouched, and appeared in excellent

condition. It wasn’t just the exceedingly rare ZF-sourced five-

speed transmission, the early add-on Becker cassette deck that

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