The invention of pneumatic tires, easily deformed steel, complex suspension systems and bigger engines sparked completely new automobile designs in the early part of the twentieth century. The later much-used slogan: “form follows function” was a particularly apt description of the way technology began to exert an influence over design during the motor car’s infant years. Mercedes was a trendsetter even back then. For Bruno Sacco, the cornerstone of Mercedes-Benz design history is the Mercedes 35 hp, the first car to bear the name Mercedes – a masterpiece of technical beauty. “The concept was not only rigorously thought through in technical terms and stylistically unique,” explains Bruno Sacco, “it was also extremely successful. It provided the foundations for a new era of automotive design.” The car designed by Wilhelm Maybach and built as a racing and sports car, which is also regarded as the very first modern automobile, generates fascination through innovation. The pioneering design of the first Mercedes-Benz vehicle features a lightweight, powerful front-mounted engine, a pressed-steel frame, a low center of gravity, a wide track gauge and long wheelbase, a raked steering column and the high-performance honeycomb radiator grille with its distinctive design. This innovative concept served numerous other manufacturers as the basis for new designs of their own.

The greatest challenge facing the development engineers at the world’s oldest automotive manufacturer in the years before the Second World War was to marry technical innovation with aesthetic guidelines. An early example of their creativity was the Lightning Benz of 1909. Its design copied aerodynamic principles and aesthetic calculation. The dominance of the Mercedes-Benz S, SS and SSK models on international race circuits between 1927 and 1932 broadcast Mercedes-Benz product and brand values all over the world. In as far as the victorious racers with their eye-catching design were reminiscent of the successful Mercedes “Grand Prix racing cars” of 1914, these cars became the company’s first ambassadors for continuous brand development. The Mercedes-Benz 500 K and 540 K models of 1935 and 1936 then conveyed this message further still. Full of character, ostentatious in design and with flowing lines, they still pass to day for objects of unsurpassed beauty.

In the years after the Second War the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL gripped the automotive world. Designed as a competition vehicle by the ingenious racing engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the two-seater was transformed by body designer Friedrich Geiger into an automotive masterpiece. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL featured a space frame, which for structural reasons came up relatively high at the sides. This meant the door hinges had to be moved to the top, and the result was the birth of the gullwing door. It was also the first time a Mercedes-Benz road vehicle did not sport a vertical radiator grille, adopting instead an almost bestial air vent with a three-pointed star at its center. The new front end came to define the design of all subsequent SL sports cars. Between 1954 and 1957 a total of 1,400 300 SL coupes were built. Production of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL roadster then started up almost immediately. Bruno Sacco was able to experience this at first hand. Having started at Mercedes-Benz in Untertürkheim in 1958, the young designer later described his first impressions: “I was utterly fascinated by the way the body had been put together with such care and artistry.”