The Mercedes W111/W112 Coupes and Cabriolets

MERCEDES – BENZ

The Mercedes W111/112

Coupe and Cabriolet

From the 220SE to the 280SE 3.5

1961 – 1971

By Bernd S. Koehling

Copyright 2018 Bernd S. Koehling

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

CONTENT

Foreword

The Cars

220/300/250/280SEC W111 / W112 (1961 – 1971)

Developing the 220SEC

The safety features

The engine

The 220SE Coupe, Cabriolet

The 300SEC

The 250SEC

The 280SEC

The Flachkühler

The sales performance

Radio vs. radio with tape deck

Experiencing the 280SE 3.5 Coupe

Technical chapters

The W111 / W112 chassis number explained

The W111 / W112 data card

What is my car worth

- The 220SEC

- The 250SEC

- The 280SEC high-grille

- The 300SEC

- The 280SEC low-grille

- The 280SEC 3.5

- The W111C versus the Dow Jones Index

W111 / W112 Buyer’s Guide

The paint options

Technical specifications

Annual production figures of each model

Rudolf Uhlenhaut

About the author

Other books by the author

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FOREWORD

First, I would like to thank you for having purchased this book and I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is part of an e-book series that covers all cars produced by Daimler-Benz during the 1950s and 1960s. A printed version of this book is available via a link on my website.

Daimler-Benz was not in a hurry to replace the ponton coupe/cabriolet series. They were slow selling luxury cars with a high level of hand-assembly involved. There was not much money to be made this way and it is doubtful that Daimler-Benz was able to generate any profit on these cars at all.

This time the scenario was different. Use the same chassis as the W111 sedan and keep the engine of the fuel injected version only. It had been or maybe still is a belief today among designers, formerly called stylists, that a coupe looks best when it is based on the unaltered platform of its sedan cousin. With only two doors the passenger compartment appears more stretched and elegant. Everybody involved in the project knew that the fin tails had been a mistake, the new coupe would do without them. At the end it turned out that except for the headlights and the radiator grille, no single body part was taken from the sedan.

The W111 coupe/cabriolet models were designed by the team around Friedrich Geiger, who was director in the styling department headed by Karl Wilfert. Paul Bracq and Bruno Sacco worked under Friedrich Geiger, Bracq as head of advanced design. The 220SE Coupe was hailed at its introduction as a true masterpiece of balanced and timeless beauty. Today, some fifty years after their launch, both coupe and cabriolet are still regarded as some of the best designs ever to have left the assembly lines in Stuttgart. This is especially true for the last version: the 3.5 l V8 Flachkühler.

This book was revised in December 2016 with additional updates in March 2018. A comprehensive buyer’s guide can help you to sort out eventual trouble spots and chassis number and data card are explained in detail. Recent price developments for all models from February 2010 to February 2018 are looked at and the technical specifications have been extended with more photos of the suspension added. Some of you have asked me, whether it is possible to include more information about the men that were responsible for all these wonderful cars. This book has that is why a chapter added, that covers the career of Rudolf Uhlenhaut in Daimler-Benz. Other books cover people like Nallinger, Barenyi, Wilfert or Hoffman.

December 2016/March 2018

Bernd S. Koehling

Developing the new 220SE Coupe

First sketches of the new car's shape appeared as early as 1957, with the design closely following the sedans styling. This was somewhat logical, as the car was to share the chassis and wheelbase with the W111 sedan. Daimler-Benz needed to get away from the expensive production of small volume cars, which were mostly hand-assembled. Cars such as the 300S and the ponton coupes and cabriolets shared very little with their sedan counterparts. They also wanted the interior of the new cars to be larger, so that four to five passengers could now be accommodated. This, they assumed correctly, would increase the car's sales potential.

In this respect, it is interesting that competition had already shown, which way the Mercedes designers planned to go. BMW had introduced in 1955 a Graf Goertz designed two-door pillarless coupe, the 503, which had all the virtues Daimler-Benz wanted to see in their own new coupes.

The 503 offered a 3.2 L V8 engine with 140 PS

It was not only elegant and spacious, it even came with power windows, a feature Daimler-Benz introduced only in the 1960s

In early 1957 Fritz Nallinger, executive board member and head of the passenger car division, came up with the plan to offer a coupe/cabriolet version that would complement the 300SE W112 sedan. It should be launched together with the W111 220b series. The sedan would replace the 300 Adenauer as luxury car and the two door versions were consequently seen as replacement for the 300Sc, which would be stopped in 1958 due to very low demand.

A 1957 Bracq drawing, closely following the basic W112 lines with fintails, but with a lowered front

These plans had to be changed though, when it became clear that the W112 sedan could be launched due to production limitations only in 1961, two years after the 220b series. As the ponton coupe and cabriolet looked already somewhat dated, it was decided in a meeting in 1958 to use the concept not for a 300Sc replacement, but instead for a successor to both the 300Sc and the ponton coupe/cabriolet.

A clay model with the SL front, but lowered rear fins

During the design process, both design team members Paul Bracq and Bruno Sacco would have favored a front similar to the SL, but sales and marketing voted for a traditional front mask instead. Also their direct superior Friedrich Geiger favored this path. At least the much debated fins, which head of design Karl Wilfert had tried to reduce on the W111 sedan too late, were changed to more acceptable proportions. Bracq had earlier designed the new hardtop of the 300SL roadster, which was consequently adopted for the 190SL. As both had turned out to look exceptionally well, it was only logical for him to design a similar rear window treatment for the new coupe.

In 1959, Friedrich Geiger’s team was able to present a coupe with particularly clean lines. With its pillar-less side glass and wraparound front and rear windows, the car was a statement of exquisite taste and timeless beauty. When asked, Bracq denied that he alone was responsible for the design of the car. Instead, he said that it was as always with Daimler-Benz a team effort. Designs usually evolved after lengthy discussions within the team and it would happen often that he and Geiger would eventually come up with similar proposals to a certain idea. Interestingly he repeated this again in an interview about his responsibility of the pagoda SL design in early 2013 for the Mercedes-Benz Classic Magazine 01/2013. Yet there are at least three features that Bracq, if he would choose to do so, could claim on the two-door W111 to be his work: the reduced fintails, the roof with wrap-around front and rear windows, plus the center line that interrupted the side of the car. It did not only cut the side in two halves, it also lengthened the car’s appearance from the side.

A 1958 wooden mock-up, still showing fintails

Although sedan and coupe shared the same chassis, it had to be strengthened on the sides in order to accommodate the coupe's pillar-less design. Also the A-and C-pillars had a strengthened profile. In addition the suspension had been altered, so that the car’s body would rest some 2.5 cm (0.98 in) lower on the ground. Sedan and coupe had roughly the same length, but the coupe was 5 cm (2 in) wider and its roofline 8.5 cm (3.3 in) lower. Next to chassis and engine, the only other parts