Quick, name the world’s first production mid-engine sports car. Chances are you picked the Porsche 550 Spyder, built between 1953 and 1956. It’s a good call, but you’re wrong. The little-known Mercedes-Benz 150H predates the Porsche by two decades.
Mercedes originally developed the 150H to compete in the 1934 Deutschland Trial, and the general belief is that it built 25 competition coupe models, though none survived World War II. Two roadsters, intended as more luxuriously equipped road cars, were built for the 1934 Berlin Show. Official records are hazy, but indications say five roadsters were eventually completed, and two were sold. Just one survives.
Daimler has long flirted with the idea of a mid-engine sports car. But it has been oddly reluctant to build one.
It took more than three decades to follow up the 150H. The gorgeous, gull-winged Mercedes-Benz C111 concept (above), powered by a mid-mounted Wankel rotary engine, was the star of the 1969 Frankfurt Show, but plans for a production version died in 1971 amid concerns over the crashworthiness of its fiberglass body, and the rotary engine’s prodigious fuel consumption.
Daimler unveiled the Mercedes-Benz C112 concept at the 1991 Frankfurt Show. The C112 was Stuttgart’s high-tech response to a wave of nascent hypercars—the Jaguar XJ220, the Bugatti EB110, and the outrageous Cizeta Moroder V16T. The C112 was powered by a 408-horsepower, 6.0-liter V-12, and featured advanced technologies such as active body-control suspension, rear-wheel steering, active aerodynamics, and radar cruise control, plus, of course gullwing doors. Production plans did not survive the recession of the early 1990s, however.
Now we have the Mercedes-AMG R50. Mid-engine. High-tech. Gullwing doors. A state-of-the-moment hypercar concept that’s true to the three-pointed star. And once again, Daimler’s conservative board members seem reluctant to approve building it, even though there appears a proven appetite for bleeding-edge hypercars. Horacio Pagani sells every car he makes for a seven-figure sum. Lamborghini has sold all 40 $2-million-plus Centenarios it plans building. Aston Martin has about 350 orders for the $3.2-million AM-RB 001 and is now talking of increasing the production run of road versions from 99 to 150 cars.
It will be more than just a missed opportunity if, like the C111 and C112, the R50 simply remains auto show eye candy. It would be fascinating to find out what one of the world’s most engineering- and technology-focused automakers can do when it decides to build the ultimate road car.
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