Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, Silver with Red Interior

Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the engineer behind the 300 SLR, went to the 1955 Mille Miglia to watch his racing car win and came away thinking about a closed version for the long endurance races. Two of the nine 300 SLR chassis were rebodied as gullwing coupés, keeping the racer's fuel-injected straight-eight with its desmodromic valves under panels of Elektron, a magnesium alloy lighter than aluminium. Mercedes withdrew from racing at the end of that season, so neither coupé ever started a race; one reached 290 km/h on a closed stretch of motorway near Munich, and Uhlenhaut used a coupé as his company car. The pair are known by their upholstery, and this is the red one: chassis 0008/55, built in December 1955 and kept by Mercedes-Benz until May 2022, when it sold at the company museum in Stuttgart for €135 million, a record for any car.

CMC's model follows the red car closely: red leather throughout, seats faced in red-and-black tartan, a wood-rimmed wheel before fully legible instruments, and no registration plates, only a D badge on the tail. The gullwing doors lift on working over-centre supports, the long bonnet rises over the inclined straight-eight and its injection plumbing, and the boot opens on a spare wheel. The wire wheels wear Dunlop Racing tyres. CMC builds it at 1:18, from 1,817 parts.