[CHASING CARS] Nigel Boothman’s Market headliners
All-white Styling Garage Mercedes-Benz 500SEC ‘Gull Wing’ tests modern tastes
The first half of the Eighties saw an explosion of customised, modified offerings based on European luxury cars, and especially Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Ferrari. Many of the firms responsible were German, such as AMG, B&B, Brabus, Gemballa, Koenig, Lorinser, Strosek, Zender and Styling Garage, also known as SGS. It was this last firm, based near Hamburg and run by designer and engineer Chris Hahn, that went beyond the usual approach – wide wheelarches, lavish interiors – and took inspiration from Mercedes history by fitting gullwing doors to the then-new C126 500SEC coupé.
This demanded not only a strengthened roof structure but steel beams in the sills to maintain the car’s rigidity. The end result was remarkably successful, offering a larger and easier door aperture than the original 300SL could claim. What was lost was the C126’s pillarless feature, with a new B-pillar a vital part of the door structure. Depending on the extra work customers wanted to the interior, the bill for the conversion was likely to double the 500SEC’s already chunky list price of DM83,000 in 1985 – equivalent roughly £22,000 at that time, though the cars were much more expensive than this in the UK.
SGS showed its first Gull Wing (the badge is two words) at the Essen show in 1982, with this example built two years later in May 1984. It’s a relatively restrained example with no widebody kit and an interior in sober grey leather, piped in white with white dials. Only a startling wooden ‘falcon’s head’ gear selector hints at the excess some other customers favoured. The question now is what most appeals to the current market, 40 years on – a modicum of restraint, or full-on extravagance? Many of these 500SGS cars, as they are sometimes known, featured more aggressive body kits and much louder interiors, one famously teaming candy-apple red paint with an all-gold interior.
This car was sold new to the US and once featured white wheel discs, but perhaps looks rather better on the BBS splitrims. It was offered by RM Sotheby’s at its Munich sale in late November, estimated at €350k-€400k (£290k-£330k). The record of recent sales for cars like this is small, but it’s possible to point to a handsome bronze 500SGS offered by Artcurial in February 2023 that failed to sell on a €400k-€600k (£330k-£495k) estimate.
This car also didn’t find a buyer, even when surrounded by other valuable German performance cars. This is perhaps a surprise, because the sums paid for AMG wide-body cars of the same era haven’t been stagnant. AMG’s eventual one-ness with Mercedes-Benz confers much kudos on pre-takeover examples. The last two years have seen surprising auction results for the AMG 560SEC of £561k, £325k and £454k. More astonishing still was the $775k (£604k) paid for a 1987 E-Class AMG ‘Hammer’ saloon at Broad Arrow’s 2023 Amelia Island sale. It appears that a non-AMG independent, albeit one of the best known, doesn’t reach the same league, but could it be that unusual specials like this will soon be dragged up in the wake of the AMG cars?
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