Gable's Gullwing: Driving the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Owned By an Icon

Motor Trend12-06-2025

[This story first appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of MotorTrend Classic]
The article recounts driving Clark Gable's 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing, highlighting its history, performance, and connection to the Hollywood legend. Now owned by Bob Howard, the iconic car remains a testament to the elegance and engineering that captivated Gable.
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In this business you drive countless cars, most of them interesting and many of them thrilling and some of them unforgettable, but few of them are haunting in the fashion of the car you are sitting in now. It's a landmark machine, for one, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL 'Gullwing' Coupe, ahead of its time, one of the most acclaimed sporting two-seaters ever made, a pristine example from just 1400 produced between 1954 and 1957, a scrapbook trophy even for veterans of the car-testing trade. But this particular 300SL is more than that; much more. This was Gable's car.
To say 'Clark Gable' would be redundant; 'Gable' is enough. The King of Hollywood. The weatherworn man's man with the pencil moustache who uttered the most immortal line in movie history—'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn'—and then strode away into Hollywood's Olympus. The matinee idol of idols who starred with Jean Harlow in 1932's 'Red Dust' and then, in 1953, joined Ava Gardner in the remake of 'Mogambo'—because, even after 21 years, audiences wanted no one else in the lead role. He sat in this very seat, adjusted these chromed controls, tipped his Kents and his Cuban cigars into this ashtray, grinned with the giddy gratification of owning something wonderful when he twisted the key and this 3.0-liter inline-six thumped to life. This was Gable's car. For today, it's yours.
Gable bought the Gullwing new, at Mercedes-Benz of Hollywood, in 1955. On the registration alongside his signature is that of his fifth and final wife, actress and model Kay Spreckels. Perhaps the couple drove the Mercedes back to their Encino, California, estate together, Gable awkward as he folded his six-foot, one-inch frame over the wide door sill and into the tidy cockpit for the first time, husband and wife giggling as they pulled shut the novel top-hinged doors, dealership employees and Kodak-toting passers-by crowding close as Gable fired up the engine, cleared its throat with quick stabs of the throttle, eased his new toy into traffic. Once home, Gable would've called up a few close pals—like MGM publicity boss Howard Strickling—and invited them over to see his prize, the buddies sipping whiskey and trading barbs as they admired the 300SL's avant-garde curves in the Southern California dusk. 'She's sure something, Clark,' they'd have said. And Gable would've flashed that klieg-light smile.
You study the silver-painted sheetmetal, looking for reflections of the sights this car has seen—the rising sun as the Gullwing sat in Gable's driveway, dewy and cold, waiting for the movie star to bound from his house, script under his arm, in a rush to make that morning's call time for 'Run Silent, Run Deep'; the iconic faces—Lancaster, Monroe, Stewart, Hayward—who peered curiously at this futuristic machine parked on the studio lot in the King's reserved space; the Santa Monica mountains blurring past as Gable spurred the car homeward, blissfully alone at last after another draining day at the epicenter of the sound-stage beehive, temporarily released from the makeup assistants and the dialog coaches and the camera grips and the unblinking, unforgiving stare of the Panavision lens. You study, but the Gullwing's silvery skin is silent with its secrets, faithful to its original master.
This was Gable's car, from that happy delivery day in 1955 until the star's sudden death of a heart attack on November 16, 1960. He'd finished the grueling shoot of Arthur Miller's Western 'The Misfits,' costarring Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, just two weeks earlier. The Benz had been with him on the Nevada set. Cinematographer Doc Kaminsky, hired to make a behind-the-scenes documentary, remembers racing Gable and the Gullwing across the desert floor. 'He had a Gullwing Mercedes and I had a brand-new Austin-Healey at the time,' Kaminsky told the Reno News & Review. 'Clark was an excellent driver, and we'd go blasting off over the Geiger Grade. And this was in the 1960s, remember, so no speed limits.'
Gable and the Gullwing helped Kaminsky bust limits with the ladies, too. 'One day, I was going with a girl downtown and I pulled up to a traffic light,' Kaminsky told the paper. 'Clark Gable pulls up next to me in his Gullwing and says, 'Hi, Doc. How's it going?' And the girl I was with, her teeth fell out. She says, 'Was that Clark Cable?' 'Oh, yeah. I'm working with him on a project.''
Only weeks later Gable was gone—the victim, many said, of having overtaxed his hard-living, 59-year-old body by doing his own stunts in that final film ('How do you find your way back in the dark?' asks Monroe's Roslyn Taber at the movie's close. 'Just head for that big star straight on,' Gable's Gay Langland replies. 'It'll take us right home'). Gable's body was laid to rest alongside that of his beloved third wife, actress Carole Lombard, killed in a 1942 plane crash while returning home from a war-bond campaign. Four months later, Gable's widow, Kay, gave birth to his one and only child, son John Clark.
Soon the Gullwing moved into the orbit of a lesser star, Harry Haenigsen, creator of the 'Penny' comic strip that ran from the early 1940s into the 1960s. In the early 1970s, Haenigsen sold the car to Charles R. Wood, an entrepreneur known as the 'Father of Theme Parks' and cofounder (with Paul Newman) of a camp for terminally ill children. Wood kept the Gullwing for three decades until, in 2003, at age 89, he sold the car to its fourth and current owner, Bob Howard, president of Mercedes-Benz of Oklahoma City and one of the directors of the huge Group 1 Automotive dealer association.
Most days, Gable's Gullwing now sits quietly on Howard's dealership floor, a three-pointed star attraction even amid the gleaming S-Classes, CL coupes, and a nearby SLR McLaren. But today you're going to take it out and prod the rarely touched throttle pedal and stir the gears and steer lateral gs into the tires—and you'll do it carefully, indeed, because this Gullwing is worth maybe $700K and, besides, if you so much as scratch it Gable himself might materialize and swing on you the way he punched Spencer Tracy in 1940's 'Boom Town.'
Climbing aboard, you fold your cowboy boots back with your hands to keep from scraping the wide leather door sill (and Gable was an inch taller than you), but once you're seated the cabin is cozy. The dash is a riot of knobs and sliders—all unmarked, so you need to memorize what they do or you'll switch on the lights when you're trying to activate the ventilation fan. Strapped down behind your head is the set of optional fitted leather luggage that Gable ordered for his car (long ago, undoubtedly, the cases kept clean and neatly folded the size 44 Long suits he bought four or five at a time at Brooks Brothers in New York). Above your left leg, near the parking brake, protrudes a tube from engineer Rudolph Uhlenhaut's lightweight welded spaceframe (which blocks the usual passenger-door openings; hence the upward-raising gullwings). You'd normally find such tubes in a race car, of course, but at its heart that's what the Gullwing is, American Mercedes importer Max Hoffman having persuaded the German maker to build a road version of its Le Mans-winning 1952 300SL. The Gullwing weighs just 2850 pounds—and has no air conditioning.
Over the years, the Benz has been restored to perfection—current owner Howard has spiffed up the paint and the engine—but it's just as it was during Gable's lifetime. It was Gable who ditched the standard steel wheels in favor of the racing Rudge knockoffs the car wears now. The only item the star might not recognize is the steering wheel; in place of the standard white rim is an elegant, wood-and-chrome Nardi model. One picture of the car taken during Gable's reign appears to show the Nardi, but it's fuzzy. You trace your fingertips over the wood anyway, in case it was this wheel that decades ago twirled under the hands that once seized Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara by the shoulders while an angry Rhett Butler snarled: 'That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often—and by someone who knows how.'
This Gullwing is rare and valuable enough that you ask for instructions before touching a thing. The car's handler responds that the engine likes a few seconds of fuel pump before you engage the starter. You oblige with a tug on the appropriate knob, then twist the key. The Gullwing was the world's first production car with a direct-injection four-stroke gas engine, and the inline-six lights off easily and settles into a confident thrum. Gable's car is alive again.
The door above your head is beautifully balanced—it stays raised until you want it closed, then drops with a gentle pull. It's hot in here; no wonder Gable liked to shower three times a day. The fully synchronized four-speed slips easily into first, the clutch releases smoothly, and you're off. You are driving Gable's Gullwing.
Naturally you're tentative at first—nervous, even—but the 300SL is so modern and forgiving in its control responses, you can't help but begin to let it run. It wants to run. Above 3000 rpm, the engine opens up like a floodgate: You're quickly up into third and have to back off hard for a turn; downshifts are sweet and easy, the giant finned drum brakes strong. You're back on the power, the engine growing happier after every climb up the tach. You're sure it could do 140-plus. Easy.
And now the Gullwing is finally beginning to speak to you. Now, it says, you understand why Gable loved it so. You hear the proud mechanical aria that Gable heard, your boots are squeezing the pedals his boots did, your eyes are watching the same instrument needles rise and fall, you're savoring the very engineering excellence the car showered on the movie star. This, you realize, is how it felt to be the King of Hollywood as he drove to work or raced across the desert or challenged a mountain road just for the joy of it. In here, alone in the cockpit of this remarkable automobile, you are just as he was.
Too soon, though, your day is over; Gable's Gullwing is due back in its showroom. You switch off the engine, raise the door, and, as slowly as you can, climb out. You watch as the car is hoisted onto a flatbed trailer, then begin scribbling notes. As you write the word 'Gable,' you smile and lift your head to gaze at the Gullwing one more time. But already, as if carried off with a brisk gust of Oklahoma wind, it is gone. Our Take
Then: 'Docile enough for city driving, yet possessing phenomenal power and roadability, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL may have what it takes to create a new concept in motoring the world over.' —Gunther Molter, MotorTrend, April 1954
Now: It can't be half a century old. Many new cars in the 1980s didn't drive this well—weren't this fast or this well built or this much fun. And few cars have ever looked so good. It's fitting that Gable owned one; both movie star and Gullwing have endured as few others ever will.
Test drive courtesy Bob Howard, President, Mercedes-Benz of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma www.mbokc.com
Photo location courtesy Robert and Nedra Funk, Express Ranches, Inc. www.expressranches.com

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This Was The Last Carbureted Engine Sold New In America

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