Crowds gathered around a show-stopping purple coupe at the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show, which was giving all the wrong names a run for their money with its doors that flung wide open like a bird taking to the skies. The Boschert B300 Gullwing was already eye-catching, but what truly set it apart was what lurked beneath the hood. Hartmut Boschert, an engineer from Emmendingen in southern Germany, had set his sights on creating something completely new out of a regular Mercedes-Benz 300 CE from the W124 generation.
The first step was to complete the structural work, which involved completely redesigning the door. They had to raise the C-pillars about ten inches forward, fortify the sills, and figure out how to make those big doors function. They were almost as wide open as they were closed, more than five feet wide, but with deft hands, the panels blended in perfectly with the rest of the car. A nipped front portion from the then-current R129 SL roadster gives the nose a cleaner, more modern appearance.
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The appearance changed, but so did the powertrain. The factory 3 liter 6 cylinder began with 185 horsepower, but Boschert added a pair of turbochargers to see what happened… and it turned out to be a 283 horsepower beast with plenty of extra torque. On paper, this meant it could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than six seconds and reach 165 mph. The best part was that the vehicle was still very smooth on the road, simply ready to crank up the heat when you wanted it to. That level of attention to detail extended to the interior, where the R129 SL’s seats and console were upholstered in two-tone purple leather, with wood trim to warm things up and a gorgeous wooden steering wheel. Boschert logos adorned the grille, trunk lid, and center of the wheels, and a premium in-car phone system was also on the agenda.
Initially, they were eager to produce up to 300 of them, each worth approximately 186,000 Deutsche Mark. However, only a few units made it out of the factory. Only one of these gullwings is known to exist, whereas a few conventional B300 coupes survived without this costly addition.
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