Hi guys,
I’m Shmee.
Hello and welcome to the official
Mercedes-Benz YouTube channel where
today we’re going to take a look at
a completely top secret
and exclusive location,
something that has
never been seen before. Here at the
storage halls of Mercedes-Benz
Classic, we’re talking the likes of
championship winning Formula 1 and
DTM cars, road cars,
concept cars, some that never
even made it into production.
So let’s head in and
take a look. Oh, and by the way,
you’re watching in VR180
to have even
more of an experience. So let’s then
take a look inside
at some of these cars from the
Mercedes-Benz history where
we are joined by Michael from Mercedes-Benz
Classic.
How are you?
Hi, I’m Michael. And welcome to my
crib.
Thank you very much.
It’s great to be here.
Just look at this.
Insane.
My mind is blown away already at
what we’re looking at.
I mean, talk us through this.
I mean, I’m just kidding. I mean, I
wish it was my crib, but it
obviously isn’t. It’s one of
the eleven storage halls the
Mercedes-Benz collection has where we store our 1,100 cars we own in
total.
Okay.
And I just thought nobody
has been here before. So I just thought I
use the opportunity to show you
around, I guess.
Well, I think I speak for everyone
when I say that this is an
incredible thing to be able to see.
Literally Formula 1 cars, road
cars, vision cars, concept
cars, where do we begin?
Everything. Where do we begin?
Now that’s a good question.
I think we begin with the fastest
car, obviously.
Yeah, right in front of us, right here.
Tell me, I mean,
Formula 1, of course, number 44,
Lewis Hamilton.
What are we looking at?
We are looking at the
real deal. That’s the car Lewis
Hamilton won his, I think, third
championship in total, second for
Mercedes-Benz.
He won with that car in 2015.
I think in that
year we won like 16 out of
the 19 races.
So a kind of domination that year. And as I said,
that’s the real deal.
No fake, no replica.
That’s his car as he drove it.
So this is the exact car that I will have been
watching race in 2015
right here.
Exactly.
That is priceless.
I would love to let you sit in it.
But obviously, it’s his seat.
So it was made for his body. So you obviously won’t fit.
But that’s the only reason. Apart from that,
obviously, we fitted some plexiglass cover so that nobody else has a try
because as we said before, this is his car. It’s not replaceable.
Yeah.
The real deal needs to be looked after and kept forever.
Talk us through this line of cars then. I can see lots of different concepts.
But we start back in the 70s or 80s and this car literally has rubber on it.
It has, coming from Formula 1,
that’s a different kind of safety car.
That was one of our
experimental safety vehicles
we did back in the day.
It started in the 60s or 70s.
We tried some innovative safety concepts.
Like all of those cars are based on
the S-Classes because they were the
most secure car of that time.
And then we tried new stuff,
like you pointed out, the rubber bumpers or look at the big seats.
Stuff like that, that went into series production years later.
Those are kind of different kind of studies.
Those are design concepts. Like this is the design study of the A-Class.
This is the design study of, I think, the 2003 Mercedes-Benz CLS.
So that’s also the real deal.
Yeah. So that’s the Vision CLS that
was presented to the world.
That is the Vision CLS that was
presented to the world, yeah.
Because now we’ve just recently had the launch of
the third generation of the CLS.
We had. And that’s where it all started.
But I think most unique is to take a look at the
studies that didn’t
make it into the series production.
Like, for example, this F500 Mind, is it called?
It’s also from 2003 and looks very
spacious inside.
I think you shall have to...
I mean, this is completely
futuristic.
It is.
I’ve never seen it.
The thing with this is
that it’s still futuristic even now.
It is because even in
2019, we don’t have squared up
steering wheels.
But in 2003, when this car
was introduced, we thought it was the future.
And that’s a steering wheel that can
actually move. I can see that it can
slide from the centre off to the edge.
It can. And this car has even more
interesting features. For example,
look at the passenger seat.
So can I open this?
I think so.
Right beside us we have a
laptop with a holographic
projection.
You have. So you can, if you were
James Bond, you could show your evil
plans to the passenger seat.
But for example, there are some real
features that we introduced with this car.
We introduced a night vision system
in 2003 and that’s available in
the S-Class now.
So moving on from the future to some studies
that actually went into series production.
Those are the two design studies for
the Mercedes-Benz R-Class which was called the Grand Sports Tourer.
Those are the two design studies from the B-Class, which
was called the Compact Sports Tourer back then.
But moving on to some of my personal
highlights. Those are the two design
studies from the Mercedes-Benz SLK of which
the design study debuted
in 1994.
So that came out when I was seven
years old. It was one of my favourite cars back then.
And now you have the chance to meet
your icons.
And what I find funny is that
we first introduced the study
without a roof, kind of as a
roadster.
And then later that year, we
introduced a study with
the famous folding metal roof, which
kind of gives you two cars, one a
roadster and one a closed car for
the wintertime.
Back to some racing with
three race cars
that are based on road production
cars. But I think you know a fair
amount about each one of them.
This is right in my element.
Three cars that were originally
introduced as road cars, but these
being their racing siblings.
And this in particular, based on the
Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
But of course, the 722 GT,
the racetrack version, the
customer racing programme for the SLR trophy.
Can we take a look inside?
Usually
not. But since you are in here
already, I guess.
Let’s give it a try.
Let’s pop it open.
So much drama and then inside so much carbon fiber. But
that can not be the easiest thing to
try and climb into.
Oh, squeezing through.
Yeah, that’s
not so easy. But it is cool
when you’re inside here.
So is this literally
ready to be taken out? Can we go and drive it?
It is in working
condition, but for insurance
reasons, all the flammable fluids
like the oil and the fuel has
to be taken out before storage and
is replaced by a wax-
based product so stuff doesn't rust.
So technically, this car could be
driven. It just needs to enter a
workshop first, get refilled with
all the important stuff and then you
can go out and race it.
Wow. Can you imagine what this would be like?
OK. Shall we move on?
Moving on.
To this,
one of my favourites based of
course on the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG,
the road car being, well,
the first AMG project.
But this, this looks a bit different.
It looks a bit dirty to be fair.
This one won the 2012 race in Dubai. And the
special thing is we kept it
looking like that. So all the dirt
is real. All the dirt is from the desert.
It has a sign in the windscreen that
says: “Please don’t clean the car.”
Like the person who cleans
this car gets in some big trouble
but because we wanted to preserve as
much of its racing history as possible.
And I know back in 2012, the SLS AMG
GT3 car was
winning all the races. The Nürburgring 24,
the Dubai 24, the Sebring 24, lots
of twelve-hour races.
Yeah, it was quite a successful
season.
Yeah, I guess we move on from that
straight to...
To a much cleaner example.
Definitely.
The C-Class DTM car.
Bernd Schneider’s last championship-
winning car 2006.
Yeah. And also like we mentioned at
the Formula 1 car we’ve seen first.
The real deal.
So that was his car.
That’s not a replica.
That’s the last car of Bernd
Schneider.
There are some very significant cars
here from the motorsport past.
There are. I’m glad you like it.
But wait, there’s more. Actually, we
have another hall to
show you. But let’s just not walk
past this amazing car right here.
But I think you know it quite well.
Do you?
Again, the Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren, but this is the Stirling Moss.
There were only 75 of these.
I think it’s such an iconic tribute to Sir
Stirling Moss. And I was lucky
enough to join Mercedes-Benz Classic
for the Mille Miglia to drive,
retrace his footsteps, driving in a
legendary 300 SL.
But this is a tribute.
I think it’s such a unique style,
this open canopy.
And imagine sitting in
the driving position here with that
long bonnet out in front, tiny
little windshield. You’ve got the
side exit, thunderous exhaust from
the V8 as well.
This is such a special car.
And I think not many people have
actually seen the interior. So you
can have actually a look at it
because only 57, 75, right?
75 were built, I got that right. But
as I said, 75 of those.
But we have one car in here that was
only built once.
Yeah. So 75 of these and
one.
One of these amazing cars.
I think nobody knows about that
one. It’s based
on a 190 E.
But we shortened it.
It was a shortened concept car.
So it’s, I
think, two thirds of the length of a
190 E.
And the story behind it?
We wanted to go
rallying with it.
You know, when the group B was
famous back then.
So that was either like to kind of,
you know, build a shorter concept
car for the city but also an
afterthought was: “Man, then we have
a light car to go rallying
with it.” Obviously, that never
happened. But literally, none
of those people outside there know
about this car.
No, I’ve
definitely never seen that before coming here. And then immediately
alongside it is
a full camouflaged prototype.
This is
you know, the test mule for the
technology for engines and stuff.
And that’s why it’s fully
camouflaged.
And even like those one-
offs we keep in
the collection, you see
that was a test mule by looking
at highly
professional LED lights.
But that’s how you
test stuff.
We haven’t yet mentioned that right
here is one of my favourite cars in
the world, the SLS AMG Black Series.
That’s a good car. It’s one of
my favourite cars as well.
I just love the colour combination of
the yellow and how it contrasts with
all the black carbon bits.
And it is a stunning car which is
also still wearing number plates.
It has. It is one of the few cars in
here that still has number plates
and hasn’t been prepped for storage
yet. So it still has all the fluids.
But I think we shall leave it here
because I have some more impressive
stuff to show you.
Even more.
What you’re looking at in this
hall is a part of our 125 years
motorsport heritage,
which we are celebrating this year.
It’s basically full of
the best DTM cars of the
last 30 years we’ve been into this series.
This hall is an absolute dream.
From where it began?
I think. Yeah, that’s where it
began. 1988 to the end of the DTM
back in again, with the car from Roland Asch.
And I can also spot, we’ve got the
2005 Paffett
winning car.
We’ve got that.
We’ve got the 2010 Di Resta winning car.
We got that also.
As I said, plenty of
cool stuff in here.
And even the 2018 cars
all the way back over there.
Plus all the Formula 1 cars as well.
So I’ll tell you what, all of this
is giving me an itch to go out and
drive. Can we take something out?
If you promise me you’ll return it in one piece,
looking
as good as I left it to you,
I think I can make this happen.
I think I can promise that.
Sounds good to me.
Let’s do it.
For now, though.
Well, this car, the drama,
even just opening the doors.
Let’s get it started up and head on out.