Prototypes are the products of an intense automotive design process. They are ideas given physical form and meant to test the culmination of those ideas. Most serve their purpose and end as scrap or become forgotten embodiments of a larger production that ends up relegated to a warehouse collecting dust rarely, if ever, to be seen again. Occasionally one is found on flaccid tires, fading away in a dusty, shuttered garage, whereupon aficionados immediately elevate it from “ancient junk” to “treasured artifact.”
300SLS Prototype Roadster Photo Gallery by David Douglas Duncan
While doing research on the 1955 Mercedes 300SLS Prototype Roadster at the UCLA graduate research library, I came across an article titled “The Secret SLS” in Colliers Magazine by David Douglas Duncan. I proceeded to contact David in 1988 and after correspondence he was kind
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