In May of 1962, my father Jerry White purchased a 1956 Mercedes Benz 300SL sports coupe, colloquially known as the Gullwing due to the manner in which the doors opened, being hinged at the top and opening up.
Dad was a certified car guy all his life. He started working in the family business, a tire shop in Beaumont, when he was only eleven years old (which he inflicted upon my brother David and me as well). He was a member of NASCAR in his twenties. He worked in the pits at the Inidianapolis 500 as an alignment technician for Bear Automotive. He drove a Corvette. But he loved Mercedes Benz.
The DuPont Company had purchased a Gullwing specifically to study the engine (the ’55 Gullwing was the first car to have fuel injection). They removed the engine, did extensive testing, and when they were done put it back…so the body was pracitcally new. A buddy of my dad’s was an engineer with DuPont, and the spring of 1962 he let him know they were going to be selling the Gullwing as surplus. My dad put in a bid of $4,105.05 (I’ve forgotten the significance of that amount, but it comes to $43,605.28 today, according the CPI calculator at BLS), and ended up winning the auction.
That car became his pride and joy. Another friend of his, the radio personality and author Gordon Baxter, took pictures of Dad with it and saved it in his scrapbook at “Jerry White + Bride”. But the next year Dad had an actual bride, our mother Norma. Dad said he knew she was the one because she was the only one who could enter and exit the Gullwing elegantly.
In 1968, I was a year old, and David was on the way, and a two-seater sports coupe with no A/C was not very practical for a family of four in Southeast Texas, so Dad sold his beloved 300 SL to an oil man in Oklahoma for $5,000, thinking he had done pretty well to have made a profit on the vehicle after having it for six years. Fast forward to 1983, and Dad saw ‘his’ Gullwing in an auction catalog (he knew it was his becuase he remembered the serial number). The minimum bid: $250,000 (with inflation, $806,017.59). But trying to find one today for under a million is a fool’s errand: Sotheby’s just sold a 1956 for $2 million.
When I win the lottery, one of the extravagant purchases I’m going to make is to buy Dad’s Gullwing.
UPDATE: I just made the acquaintance of Rudi Koniczek, probably the foremost expert on Gullwings. He was graciously able to provide the following information for me:
- Chassis: 198.040.6500153
- Engine: 198.980.6500155
- Body: 198.040.6500149
- Color: DB190 Graphite Gray
- Upholstery: Natural Leather
- Mfg. Date: 21 June 1956
- Originally sold to: E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Delaware
- Owner 2: Jerry C White, Beaumont, Texas
- Owner 3: William Howell, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma