MERCEDES - BENZ
THE 1960s
The 220, 300, 250, 280, 3.5 Coupe/Cabrio W111, W112
1961 – 1971
By Bernd S. Koehling
Copyright 2012 Bernd S. Koehling
Smashwords Edition
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CONTENT
The Cars
220/300/250/280SEC W111 (1961 – 1971)
Experiencing the 280SE 3.5 Coupe
First of all I would like to thank you for having purchased this book and I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is part of an e-book series that covers all cars produced by Daimler-Benz during the 1950s and 1960s.
Daimler-Benz was not in a hurry to replace the ponton coupe/cabriolet series. They were slow selling luxury cars with a high level of hand-assembly involved. There wasn't much money to be made this way and it is doubtful that Daimler-Benz was able to generate any profit on these cars at all.
This time the scenario was different. Use the same chassis as the W111 sedan and keep the engine of the fuel injected version only. It had been or maybe still is a belief today among designers, formerly called stylists, that a coupe looks best when it is based on the platform of its sedan cousin. With only two doors the passenger compartment appears more stretched and elegant. Everybody involved in the project knew that the fin tails had been a mistake, the new coupe would do without them. At the end it turned out that except for the headlights and the radiator grille, no single body part was taken from the sedan.
The W111 coupe/cabriolet models were designed to a large extent by Friedrich Geiger, who was director in the design department headed by Karl Wilfert. Paul Bracq and Bruno Sacco, both also involved in the project, worked under Friedrich Geiger. The 220SE Coupe was hailed at its introduction as a true masterpiece of balanced and timeless beauty and today, fifty years after their launch both coupe and cabriolet are still regarded as some of the best designs ever to have left the assembly lines of Stuttgart.
March 2012
Bernd S. Koehling
MB 220SE Coupe, Cabrio W111/III (1961 – 1965)
MB 300SE Coupe, Cabrio W112/III (1962 – 1967)
MB 250SE Coupe, Cabrio W111/IIIA (1965 – 1967)
MB 280SE Coupe, Cabrio W111/E28 (1967 – 1971)
MB 280SE 3.5 Coupe, Cabrio W111/E35/I (1969 – 1971)
Developing the new 220SE Coupe
The date of the introduction of the 220SE Coupe was carefully chosen. It was not as usual an international automobile show, this time it was the opening of the Daimler-Benz Museum in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim on Feb. 24th, 1961 and the celebration of the company's 75th anniversary.
First sketches of the new car's shape appeared as early as 1957, when the design was closely following the sedans styling. This was somewhat logical, as the car was to share the chassis and wheelbase with the W111 sedan. Daimler-Benz needed to get away from the expensive production of small volume cars such as the 300S and the ponton coupes and cabriolets, which shared very little with their sedan counterparts. They also wanted the interior of the new cars to be larger, so that four to five passengers could now be accommodated. This they assumed correctly would increase the car's sales potential.
During the design process the much debated fins, which Wilfert tried to reduce on the sedan too late, were changed to more acceptable proportions and Friedrich Geiger, in charge of the new coupe's and cabriolet's design, presented at the end a coupe with particularly clean lines. With its pillar less side glass, a hallmark of almost all coupes coming out of Stuttgart in future, and wraparound front and rear windows the car was a statement of exquisite taste and should remain in production till 1971. Underneath, the running gear was adopted from the sedans, with whom they shared the internal code W111.
Later Geiger study of a slightly revised W111 Coupe
Initially the coupe and its open counterpart should have complimented the 300SE sedan and were seen as replacement for the 300Sc. But as the launch of the luxury three liter car was two years after the introduction of the 220b series and the ponton coupe and cabriolet looked already somewhat dated, it was decided in 1958 to use the new design and replace both the 300Sc and the ponton coupe/cabriolet with a single new design. Initially the coupe carried also the front design of the 300SL roadster, but this was changed later to the more traditional front of the 220b sedans.
When the car was introduced it became clear that unlike with the ponton series this time no carburetor engine would be made available. The car had the 2.2 l (134 cu in) M 127V engine from the 220SEb with 120hp (all horsepower in this book is measured in DIN not SAE hp) delivered at 4,800 rpm and it was the first Mercedes car, even before the 300SL roadster to be outfitted with Girling disc brakes. The sedan followed in spring 1962 only.
Although sedan and coupe shared the same chassis, it had to be strengthened on the sides due to the coupe's pillar-less design. Both cars had roughly the same length, but the coupe was 5 cm (2 in) wider and 8.5 cm (3.3 in) lower. Next to chassis and engine, the only other parts that were shared with the sedan were the head lights and the radiator grille.