This Rare 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Hides Factory Race-Bred Secrets Under Its SkinA 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing headed to auction this month is turning heads for reasons beyond its famous swing-up doors. Chassis 5500517 crosses the block as Lot 52 of Gooding & Company's Pebble Beach Auctions 2026, carrying a pre-sale estimate of $2.5 million to $3 million. According to the auction house's listing, this particular coupe was ordered from the factory with a rare combination of performance options that were far more typical of the ultra-exclusive 29 alloy-bodied Gullwings than of the roughly 1,400 steel-bodied cars built.The Gullwing's existence traces back to New York importer Max Hoffman, who convinced Mercedes-Benz to turn its Le Mans- and Carrera Panamericana-winning W194 race cars into a production sports coupe. Hoffman's pledge to buy up to 1,000 units gave Stuttgart the confidence to greenlight the project, and the factory built FIA competition eligibility into the car from the outset, complete with an options list aimed squarely at gentleman racers who wanted to campaign their road car on weekends.Chassis 5500517 was ordered with the factory's NSL-spec engine, a hotter camshaft, revised injection pump, and recalibrated distributor that added roughly 20 horsepower over the standard inline six, along with the desirable sport suspension package of shorter, stiffer springs and firmer shocks that dropped the car's stance slightly. Rudge center-lock wheels and a German Racing Silver exterior over red leather with plaid seat inserts round out a specification sheet more commonly associated with the ultra-rare alloy cars than with a standard production Gullwing.AdvertisementAdvertisementEarly ownership ran through a string of California-based 300 SL club members before the car landed with Fort Worth collector Dr. Myron Glickfeld, then settled into a single Texas collection for more than three decades. A body-on restoration performed by Bob Smith Coachworks in Gainesville, Texas, in 1994 returned the coupe to its original silver-over-red presentation, and a period-correct set of Karl Baisch luggage still rides behind the seats. Service records from marque specialists Eriksson Enterprises and Rene Luteraan document its continued upkeep in the years since.What Hagerty's Numbers Say About the Gullwing MarketGullwing values have held up as one of the more stable corners of the postwar collector market. Hagerty's valuation tools currently peg a #3-condition (Good) 1955 300 SL Gullwing at roughly $1.35 million, a figure that also breaks out factory options: Hagerty's own adjustments add about $100,000 for Rudge wheels and another $20,000 for fitted luggage, both of which chassis 5500517 carries from new. Recent public sales back up strength at the top of the market too, with a 1957 Gullwing bringing just over $1.9 million in Europe this past May and a 1956 example selling for roughly $1.56 million that same month. Set against that backdrop, Gooding's $2.5 million to $3 million estimate for a matching-numbers, factory-optioned car with a single-family, three-decade ownership stretch looks less like a stretch and more like a reflection of how much documented history and rare factory options matter to today's buyers.This sale is part of a broader wave of Gullwing and Mercedes-Benz activity expected during Monterey Car Week, where Pebble Beach's auction houses traditionally offer some of the finest 300 SLs to come to market each year. For a broader look at what else is heading to the coast this month, check out our Collector's Guide to Monterey Car Week 2026, and for a sense of how the wider collector car market has been trending heading into August, see our breakdown of the July 2026 collector car auction market. Gullwing doors on a tighter budget are possible too: we recently covered a 1994 Suzuki Cara Gullwing Kei Coupe that crossed the block for a small fraction of the price.⚡️ Read the full article on MotoriousSign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
