RallyBenz

TL/DR:
I bought a 1984 380SL and swapped in an M117.961 from a 1982 500SE in order to build a tribute to the 1980 500SL Rallye.

The goal is to have it as close as I can get to matching the one remaining 500SL Rallye that was originally campaigned by Scuderia Kassel in the 1983 ADAC Rallye Deutschland.

The whole story:
2019 – I took part in my first ever Classic Car Adventures event: Spring Thaw. Taking place throughout the backroads of British Columbia, Spring Thaw is the marquee event for Classic Car Adventures. It’s a non-competetive classic car tour where the route instructions resemble a rally route book. I ran the event in my 2.3-16 and enjoyed it so much that I immediately wanted to register for their other BC event: the Rush 2 Gold Bridge. Unfortunately, 80% (or more) of the route on Rush is dirt Forest Service Roads. Given that my 2.3-16 was set up for autocrossing, it was pretty obvious that taking it on Rush would not be a great idea. Which left me wondering what classic car would I be willing to own AND drive on dirt?

While exploring many different options, I wound up looking into Mercedes-Benz’s rally history and was re-introduced to the 450SLC 5.0 which made quite a name for itself in the late 1970s as a serious contender in the long-distance, endurance events on the WRC calendar.

It was during my further research into the Rallye SLCs that I came across a picture of a rally prepped R107 SL.

Thinking to myself that I don’t recall ever hearing about a Rallye SL, I started digging further to find out that these were build for the 1981 WRC season which was to be Mercedes’ first time tackling the full WRC season. They were actually going to go for the WRC title! In fact, they were serious enough about it that they signed the 1980 WRC Driver’s Champion (some guy named Walter Rohrl) to a (reported) 10-year contract to be their #1 works driver.

Erich Waxenberger, who was in charge of Mercedes’ motorsports efforts, knew that the SLC would be too long and heavy to be competitive on the tighter European stages and, with the W201 project still in development (the Mercedes Board had mandated that whatever the final iteration of the W201 was would have to enter and win the WRC championship), he had four R107 500SLs converted to rally spec for the 1981 season. At over 200kg lighter and 14 inchs shorter than the SLCs, these 500SL Rallyes were supposed ot be a stop-gap until what was ultimately the 2.3-16 was ready.

Unfortunately, due to a sequence of events, not the least of which was the debut of the Audi Quattro and its all-wheel drive system, the Mercedes Board decided that the 500SL Rally would not be competetive enough to justoify the financial commitment and they scrapped the Rallye programme mere weeks before the start of the 1981 season in Monte Carlo. Which meant that the 500SL Rallye was retired before it ever turned a wheel in competition. Or did it?

Fast forward to 2019. Upon learning of the story behind the 500SL Rallye, the connection to the 2.3-16, the fact that it is one of the biggests Mercedes Motorsports what-ifs, and how obcure the whole idea of a rally-prepped Mercedes, nevermind a Rally-prepped *R*107 instead of the C107 that anyone who knew about Mercedes’ rally history was familiar with, the notion of building an R107 Rallye tribute to use as a Rush2Goldbridge car was born.

So, in 2020 I set about learning as much as I could about the R107 platform and what different options were available as well as what specification the works-built cars had.

To be continued…