Following is an overview of one of our past projects. This build took about 18 months to complete. Our assignment was to complete the vehicle and finish it to the last detail. Our involvement included:

1952 Mercedes-Benz W194 SL Roadster
Recreation of chassis #09
Owner: Robert Sirna, Rochester, MI

In 1952 Mercedes-Benz returned to motor racing with a sports racing car based on their 300 series sedan. It incorporated several very innovative design features including the first triangulated tube frame. These cars created a sensation and won at Le Mans, Bern, Nurburgring, and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. For several races, including Nurburgring and the Carrera Panamericana, the factory made special roadster bodies or cut off coupe tops and entered these cars as roadsters. Chassis #09 was one such car. It raced as a coupe at Le Mans and as a roadster at the Nurburgring and the Carrera Panamericana. At the Carrera Panamericana, as car number 6, John Fitch was the driver, accompanied by mechanic Eugene Geiger. John Fitch is the only American driver who raced for the Mercedes Benz factory. After the 1952 racing session many of the cars were disassembled and the parts or subsystems were used as engineering development mules. Factory records show that chassis #09 was disassembled and then used as a test mule and development platform for the production 300SL. At the current time the Mercedes-Benz Museum has three 1952 W194 "Gull Wing" coupes. Two other chassis (#05 & #06) were re-bodied as production Gull Wings. None of the 1952 W194 racecars with roadster bodies were saved after the racing session. This car is an accurate recreation of chassis #09 which was raced by John Fitch in the Carrera Panamericana. It has what we believe to be the only 1952 M194 factory racing engine (#21) that is not in the hands of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. In building this car we elected to install all the modern safety-related subsystems that have made racing today so much safer than racing in the 1950s. The car has a fuel cell, roll bar, fire bottle, electrical shut off, six point safety belts and dual brake master cylinders. The Lime Rock Vintage Festival in September, 1999 in Lime Rock, CT was the first showing of this wonderful racecar. John Fitch, now in his 80's, drove the car in the Lime Rock Vintage Festival. A 1952 Mercedes-Benz W194 300SL Roadster had not been seen in North America since November, 1952.