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Picture the scene – it is 1955, and you are travelling westwards along the A36 in your Standard Vanguard Phase for a Sunday afternoon in the New Forest. The weather is fine, Ted Lightman & His Lightmen are playing soothing music on the wireless set, and the thermos is filled with Symington’s excellent tomato soup. Then, in your rear view mirror, you notice a silver machine that looks as though it might be a four-wheeled alien spacecraft that appears to have achieved the speed of sound. At first, you have images of that Hammer horror film The Quatermass X-Periment until you notice the badge in the radiator grille.

Of course, at a price of £4,392, the average British motorist was unlikely to call the London office of Mercedes-Benz on RELiance 7691 and arrange a test drive of a 300SL. Sixty-four years ago, even a 180 “Ponton” was an exotic sight while a Gullwing cost as much as seven Ford Anglia 100Es. There was also the fact that the top speed was 135 mph at a time and it could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 8.5 seconds when the average family saloon might run out of steam at 80 mph. Autocar thought that while the acceleration compared with ‘being on the end of a rope that is being pulled hard from in front of the car’.

As the story goes, the 300SL came about after the New York motor importer Max Hoffman wished for a crowd puller in his showroom. He told the board of directors of Daimler-Benz in late 1953 of their need for a sports car to appeal to the affluent US driver - such as their famous W194 racing car in road-going form. Hoffman committed to purchasing 500 examples, and the Gullwing went on display at the International Motor Sports Show in February 1954, with production commencing in August.

The famous doors were developed by Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the chief engineer of Daimler-Benz, as the logical solution to a challenge; the sill was too high to allow for a conventional opening. The steering wheel could be tilted, allowing a film star, or any other high-profile owner, a reasonably gracious exit and entrance from their Gullwing.

Deliveries commenced in March 1955 and such was the impact of the 300SL that motoring journalists rapidly exhausted their supply of superlatives.  Road and Track thought ‘There is only one thing left to say: the sports car of the future has become a reality’ and to Autosport ‘the whole concept represents an uncompromising realization of all the new ideas’. The famous German title Auto motor und sport regarded the 300SL as ‘the most refined and at the same time the most inspirational sports car of our era—an automotive dream’.

The first privately owned example in Britain was the property of none other than Rob Walker, and in 1955 he wrote in Motor Sport of how ‘I am a car-snob, and I like to have something that is unusual but excellent’. The reaction other motorists to his Gullwing varied from ‘a few Triumph TR2 and Austin-Healey drivers will tear past making as much noise as possible’ to Jaguar. Mk. VII owners who, on seeing the Mercedes-Benz in the mirror, suddenly press-on regardless, passing several cars on a bend.

The Roadster succeeded the original 300SL in 1957, a development that Hoffman had wished for from the outset due to the demands of the US market. To see a Gullwing at a show is, quite frankly, to marvel at what may only be described as an automotive masterpiece. And as Alfred Neubauer, the racing manager of the Mercedes-Benz, once observed ‘Nowhere is it written that a door can only open sideways’.