The Mercedes 190SL is the unfortunate victim of my stupidity. No, actually it’s the other way around; given that I passed on the opportunity to buy one for relative peanuts in the late ’70s. As much of a Mercedophile as I have been since forever, I stupidly allowed my father to forever color my perceptions of the 190SL.
On a walk in Innsbruck in 1959, we encountered one at the curb. My father said one word: damensportwagen (woman’s sports car). And that judgment clouded mine, until way to late, when I’ve finally come to give it its full propers. I’d made some serious headway on that, but this SCI review really brought the point home: in its early years, the 190SL was very much a real sports car, even if it wasn’t hard-riding, uncomfortable, crude or noisy. Who says perfection can’t be a quality of a sports car?
The 190SL had a hard act to follow: the 300SL Gullwing, simply the fastest and best sports car in the world in the 1950s. And prior to that 190SL encounter, I had already had an intimate encounter with a 300SL. My father’s med school buddy married the daughter of the owner of Mahle Pistons, and she gave him one for their wedding present. He rallied it and was a superb driver. He came to visit us in Innsbruck, and gave my father and older brother a ride they will never forget. And I’ll never forget that they didn’t squeeze me in too. But I did get to sit in it afterwards, also an unforgettable experience.
After his wild ride in the 300SL, I suppose I should forgive my father for his dismissive comment about the 190SL. But it really wasn’t warranted. In 1956, when the 190SL came on the scene, its performance was perfectly competitive, except perhaps in a dollar value. But then Mercedes never came cheap, until recent years.
Griff Borgeson, the author of this review, made the same mistake I and so many others did in relation to the 190SL: that it was a let-down. Well, in his case the point of reference was the mighty 300SL, which he describes as being “over-gunned” for the road. He says: “it corners more securely than the 300SL, it has the same excellent steering, a similar full-synchro gearbox, the same quality finish throughout, and a better rear suspension.” And then he says what he might not have said, for me, anyway: “...it’s a car you might not mind turning your wife loose with—something not many 300SL owners are doing, you can bet”. Ah, the damensportwagen, at least occasionally.
Here’s the key takeaway: “For a sports-touring car—not a competition car—the 190SL is about as close an approach to perfection as any of us are likely to see, and for the connoisseur’s car it is, it’s not expensive. But if you want a car for winning Class E races, keep looking…”
But it wasn’t perfect in one regard: its paint job. Hmm. Who would have thought.
The 190’s engine was of course its Achilles heel, or so it turned out to be. It was a high output version of the new M121 SOHC four as also found in so many sedans, vans and even the Unimog. It shared certain design features with the 300 six, and its output of 120 (gross) hp was quite impressive for a 1.9L four. But obviously for the price, the lack of a six is what made it come to seem less than what it might have been.
Had it had the 2.2L six from the W180, especially with fuel injection, it would have been a different story. presumably MB had difficulties in supplying adequate numbers of the M180 six to the pontoon sedans, hence the reason for using the M121 four.
But for 1956-1957, 120 hp was a good showing: “the engine is awfully strong...”.
Acceleration was competitive, although not for the money so much. The 11 seconds from 0-60 is what the TR-3 would do, although in a very different fashion, as it represented the opposite spectrum in terms of sophistication and refinement. And acceleration certainly isn’t everything.
It was the usual Mercedes qualities that really made it stand out, and worth the price: “road-holding and steering inspire a profound sense of security, as do its brakes”. Cornering manners were deemed superior to the 300SL, thanks to the now single-pivot rear swing axle suspension, the ultimate development of that oft-scorned system. All this “contributes to a more or less subtle psychological level of to a sense of security and perfection that grows on you every hour you drive the car”. Which is exactly what every classic Mercedes did; hence the reason why folks were willing to pay plenty for that experience.
Speaking of, in around 1978-1979, I used to spend a lot of time perusing the ads in the LA Times, and by then well-used 190SL at shockingly low prices (from today’s standpoint) made their presence noticeable. The idea had a certain appeal; part of me knew it would be a good investment long term. But then the damenwagen thing would pop in my head. As well as knowing that even then they weren’t going to be cheap to work on.
I ended up buying an MGB-GT that was in worse shape than I was willing to admit, and sat in my garage for several years until I finally fixed it, and then sold it. Now if only I had made the right choice…
Highly related further reading:
This Griff Borgeson character is going to go places, I think. Has the reporter’s skill for informing, and the writer’s skill for doing so with a characterful minimalism: it’s hard to say what works so well by picking some line out, but he has it.
It takes a bit of fortitude to say that this reputed ladies car is in fact a better vehicle in all things but power than the vaunted SL supercar of the day. But ultimately, he does (whilst throwing a bone to the bone-heads who must screech about race tracks, or think that they do). It’s honest. For my tastes, a number of the big-name US auto writers across this period and into the ’60’s and ’70’s were yawnish blowhards, and printed stuff that was tangled and mangled by a too-great fondness, for both the slang of the minute, and themselves.
I’ve driven a Ponton 190, clearly in lower tune, but it’s not a spectacular engine even for its time, being all a bit gritty and moanful and apparently bolted to a flywheel from a Fordson tractor. But the power-to-weight of the 190sl isn’t awful, and the somewhat solid nature of the engine’s reactions (along with the shift he says cant be hurried) means that in the real world, this isn’t a slow car. Especially the world of that time.
Also, just look at it!
From my memory of your life with your dad, Paul, it seems quite possible that this was the last time he influenced a decision you made. Not including the hidden inheritance of genes and upbringing, ofcourse – we all carry that mixed blessing for life in all we do and decide.
It can be hard to look at a car on its own, outside of the context that normally surrounds it. Such comparisons are invited when a company puts out the best sports car in the world and follows it up with another that looks similar but is cheaper and less powerful. A very different example is the non-letter 1962 Chrysler 300 that was sold beside the 300H. The regular car was a fine car, but it is easy to fall into the trap of saying that it was for doctors’ wives and poseurs.
It wasn’t just your father. I laughed, remembering a scene from the 1959 Hitchcock movie North by Northwest. Cary Grant is force-fed a bunch of whisky and put into one of these with the idea that he will drunkenly drive off a cliff. He makes it safely past the danger and when he tries telling the cops what happened, one of the conspirators feigns horrified surprise, saying “You didn’t borrow Laura’s Mercedes!?”
This is an excellent example of evidence that auto reviewers have rarely looked out for the readers instead of the advertisers. I spent the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s reading every classic car book and magazine I could get my hands on. I spoke to restorers of international classics built from the ’20s to the early ’70s. These are the most favorable words I’ve ever seen about the 190SL, which was considered about as exciting as a third generation Mercury Capri for the first fifty years of its existence. I have no doubt it was beautifully crafted compared to other two-seaters, but it was also heavy, slow, had near as no price/performance relationship, and brought unfavorable judgement on any man who would drive something that looked like a 300SL, went like a family sedan, and was priced like a Jaguar XK 150S or fuel-injected Corvette with everything.
1957 was still during the time when a sports car in the US was supposed to acquit itself around a decommissioned WWII airfield, and you’d have had to try pretty hard to find one less suited than a 190SL. They make sense as classics for puttering around and socializing with other people who can spend a few times the average family income on each of a dozen different useless talismans, but they didn’t merit glowing reviews in their period.
Your massively warped perceptions and irrepressible bias are as usual, Lol-provoking. Whatever time you spent on all those magazines and books during all those decades was obviously wasted. The maximum acceleration per dollar formula was not the only in existence. As fast as the Corvette was, it was also profoundly crude and uncomfortable. And the XK150S had serious deficiencies also.
I could go on, but it would be as wasted on you as all those books and magazines were.
“It’s a dull-but-expensive piece of transportation in sports car clothing,” wrote Jerry Titus in Sports Car Graphic. “While this opinion may infuriate some proud 190 owners, we doubt it will even raise an eyebrow at the factory, as we suspect this is exactly what they had in mind.”
https://auto.howstuffworks.com/mercedes-benz-sports-cars2.htm
Congratulations! You’ve been hard at work, giving Google a real workout. Not exactly surprising, coming from one of the most aggressive race car drivers ever.
You obviously missed they key paragraph from the review above that I quoted in my text: “For a sports-touring car—not a competition car—the 190SL is about as close an approach to perfection as any of us are likely to see, and for the connoisseur’s car it is, it’s not expensive. But if you want a car for winning Class E races, keep looking…”
If you’re into hard core sports-racers, it clearly wasn’t going to be your thing. But if folks want to keep evaluating it on those terms, they will undoubtedly find the 190SL lacking.
To each their own.
I happened to grab the July, 1981 issue of Road & Track to read the cover article comparing an Alfa, a Datsun and a Porsche. The article was written by Henry N. Manney III, who on page 39 wrote:
My view has been that the Z cars were sort of like 190SL Mercedes, the Schweizerdeutsch Thunderbird that rich folks bought for their girlfriends as it wasn’t fast enough to get anyone hurt. No really serious person would own one. Not Sporting.
I didn’t imagine that the 190SL was short-hand for a car that didn’t deliver on its looks for half a century. I do think it is funny that so many Brits loved and continue to love criticizing the Datsun Zs for being the same way even in comparison tests where they were far faster than their European rivals, and having vanquished primitive English sports cars from our shores. The 1981 test was a follow up on a 1976 comparison of the same three brands offerings where the Datsun 280Z was 2.5 seconds quicker to 60 than the Alfa and Porsche it was measure against. If it was too slow to be dangerous, what were they? Yesterday I watched an episode of Barnfinds set in England, where a guy with a rotting 260Z in his driveway talked about how pathetically slow it was before he dropped in a built SBC, as if it wasn’t faster than a TR6, TR7, MGB and the vast majority of Ford Capris. On the other hand, I really do think the 190SL had looks and a price that promised more than its engine and curb weight could deliver on.
You just proved your point: Perceptions are highly subjective and not based on factual reality.
Yes, there have always been plenty of tweed-cap/macho guys who found the 190SL lacking. It’s the old damensportwagen thing. A put down, because it was much more refined in its suspension and body solidity than the ox-cart spring “real” sports cars of yore.
The simple reality is that the 190SL’s performance was perfectly competitive with most of other sports cars of the time. It was exactly as fast as the AC Ace, faster than the A-H 100-6 (and 100-4), the TR-3 powered Morgan, the TR-3, and the Porsche Speedster.
Yes, the Jag XK-140MC was faster, but it had plenty of vices. As did the Corvette.
The reality is that most sorts car guys weren’t able to get past its image to appreciate what a competent car it was. How dare a sports car be comfortable, have 4 wheel independent suspension, handle well over rough pavement, have a rock-solid body, wind up windows, etc.? What’s the world coming to?
In reality, the 190SL was the prototype of the sports car of the future, as they would all soon adopt all those features.But you know yourself how intrinsically conservative men will diss anything that smacks of progress, even though progress is absolutely inevitable.
I sold Subarus in 1989. One of our offerings was the 3-cylinder, van Doorne-CVT-transmission-equipped Justy. How many cars does that describe today? Isn’t progress grand!
I’ve read about the damenwagen thing in historical accounts from when these cars were new, such as the story of a highly ambitious woman from Green Forest, Arkansas who bought one of these when she became successful as an ad copywriter, to attract a publisher (and later filmmaker) that she had her eyes on. She later went on to become a noted author and magazine editor. You may have heard of her: Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl, and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine.
And in Pillow Talk, at least Tony Randall had the decency to try to get Doris Day to marry him with an offer of a 300SL, instead of a mere 190…
My impressions of the 190SL were also clouded my my father’s perceptions. I remember going to a classic car show with my father as a kid, and seeing a 190SL. At first, I confused it with a 300SL, but my father said “That’s a 190… those are dogs.” He wouldn’t even stop to look at it.
And your story of considering buying a cheap, used 190SL made me think of this ad from one the Washington, DC area Mercedes dealers, advertising how their then-general manager got his start in the industry by buying a used 190SL that “needed work.”
It’s interesting what cars develop a reputation as a “women’s car”. The new VW Beetle comes to mind, as does a non-GT Mustang. The Lexus ES 350 and RX 350 also seem favored by upper middle class women on their way to Nordstrom’s or the Whole Foods Market. I’m sure my fellow CC’ers can think of many more.
I discriminate against many good cars, I’ll admit. Often for very foolish reasons. Styling, color, brand, nationality, and experiences. The good news is that there are more good cars than cars I can discriminate against.
As to this beautiful machine, I instantly imagined it with a Thunderbird, a Corvette, a Hawk, and a Jaguar of the same year. It is an amazing vehicle and I fully understand the love folks have for it. It is a pretty car at a time when its competitors didn’t strive for pretty. I can understand “damensportwagen” as a contemporary opinion. We changed, it hadn’t.
“Now if only I had made the right choice…”
I hate to think of what these were selling for in ’79, but I can only imagine the overwhelming desire I’d have to kick myself today if I’d been in your shoes back then. A friend briefly entertained buying a well-used ’72 350SL circa 1990 when pricing seemed to make good sense. He too was swayed by the cost of repairs, so didn’t take the leap.
I haven’t looked at current pricing for ’72 SLs, but I have a client who insures his nicely restored ’57 190SL for $121,300 as of today. It’s a beautiful car, but it’s hard for me to make the mental connection between the physical object and the atmospheric value. Perhaps if I drove it I’d understand. Hmm…
I remember a 190SL in my youth.
It must have been around 1973 when I was 10 years old and walked every day back home from school, passing through some streets. In one of the streets I remember always walking past a BMW Isetta (still in use) and a NSU Prinz. On sunny days in another street people often were found sitting in their tiny front garden with a barbeque and beers for everyone.
However one such garden did not contain a barbeque but a rusted, half sheeted over 190SL. I remember it well, even with the rust, as being a cool car. I have walked past it for at least a couple of years and can still pinpoint the exact house where it was – I suppose they do not have it anymore 🙂
I’d like to see what the 190 and 300 would look like without the silly eyebrows over the fenders, which unnecessarily busy up and antiquate a nice overall shape. They appear to be simple bolt-ons, but unfortunately, the wheel arches underneath are flattened at the top.
Often bolt-ons, but it depended on the exact model spec.
Every time I see one of these, I can’t help but think this was probably what Mary Tyler Moore drove in the early ’60s.
MTM herself in real life, possibly. I’d always pictured Rob and Laura Petrie as premium compact sedan early-adopters.
Specifically, GM premium compact sedans. I can easily picture a first-year ’61 Tempest, F-85 or Buick Special in their driveway. A Dodge Lancer is a bit of a stretch, a Comet even more of one and the only way they’d have a ’61 or ’62 Ambassador is if American Motors sponsored the Alan Brady Show.
An early episode showed the Petries in a stock clip of a late fifties Coronet. A later episode showed an early Mustang in the Petrie’s garage.
Neither my dad nor I knew it was a “damensportwagen” when he bought a new one in 1958.
He was an engineer in aviation and above all of course appreciated engineering. Until then he had various Chrysler Corporation coupes; I remember a Chrysler Windsor from about 1952. Prior to the 190SL he had a ’55 Plymouth Belvedere coupe. He liked a two door car. He also traveled to Europe frequently for work – mostly to Holland and Germany. So he (and the other engineers at the company) found out about Mercedes. And in the late ’50s buying one in Germany and then exporting to the USA was easy and cheaper (strong Dollar, weak D-Mark).
One of his co-workers previously imported a blue 190SL. There were a few other Mercedes owners at the company too; those cars were ponton sedans. My dad’s 190SL was white with red leather interior and black hardtop (and black canvas convertible top too). He used it not as a sports car but really as just his daily driver to and from work and around town.
In 1961 the company provided several executives with cars; the fleet was Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 four door sedans. The 190SL was now redundant and he was not overly attached to it so it was sold to a nearby neighbor.
I was too young to drive or to really appreciate the 190SL and it was forgotten but to this day I do admire Mercedes engineering and style from the ’50s through the ’90s. That has affected my car interests and buying.
I own 2.
Very sexist calling it a “womans car” – in England folk would be more gender-neutral and call it a hairdressers’ car – although a hairdresser would have had to do a lot of cutting and blow-drying to afford one of these in the 50s.
In Oz, Uncle, that term was widely used, and had an extra, and particularly nasty aggression behind it than just against women: “everyone” knew that male hairdressers, you see, were all gay, so it meant all of the limp-wristed stereotyped awfulness you can imagine was wound right into it. Nice.
Difficult as the world seems right now, there’s so much that’s better.
(For clarity, not a single word of this is directed at you, good sir)
Warren Beatty changed my view of hairdressers after I saw “Shampoo”.
Sample of Chicago Tribune prices, 1975-80:
They weren’t exactly *cheap*, they cost what was then new-car money; here’s a 1978 Chevy price list;
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/GM%20Corporate%20and%20Concepts/1978-GM-Full-Line-Brochure/slides/1978_General_Motors_Vehicles-28.html
Everything on a ’78 Chevrolet was optional. The ones tested by magazines often had as-tested prices around 40% over base price, and even they had far from every box checked. My mother spent about 70% over base price on a 1979 Plymouth Horizon that still didn’t have everything the ones pictured in the brochures did.
When I was growing up one neighbor in our small Midwest town was a Mercedes-Benz family. They had a 58 190SL and a 61 or 62 190D (the W110 with fins), both rare sights in that time and place. As a kid, getting a chance to ride in the 190SL – white, red leather, black top – was a blast. Not the fastest car around but great exhaust note and build quality, and very cool presence. I really lusted for the 300SL coupe and still have a Tootsietoy example purchased at the local dime store back in the day.
Sandra Dee’s character in the movie A Portrait in Black contributed to the “chick car” stereotype: she drove a 190SL. Didn’t the Pagoda model have a similar reputation? I remember Julie Christie driving one in Shampoo.
Here was my 1962 Mecedes 190SL with a 327 Corvette drive-train and even Corvette hood effects! I wish I had it today.
Engine bay picture. I need to have my old Polaroid pictures scanned properly!
Bet that would make the purists cringe today, but I like it! So 70s!
What was used for the rear axle?
CA Guy – The Pagoda shouldn’t have had a chick car reputation. In its very first year the car was of course completely unproven but won the difficult Spa-Sofia-Liege road rally. Photos of that competition car will show how tough it was. I believe the Pagoda was of extremely high quality and was very rugged. Of course it was an inline six – no longer a four. The 230SL replaced both the 190SL and the 300SL.
Perhaps I should have said “similar unearned reputation” – I love the Pagodas – this one pops up in my neighborhood all the time and it is a wonderful sight. The Pagodas undeniably were popular with women here in SoCal – at least based on my observations of seeing so many women drive them here on the West Side. Also, the movies may have made too much of an impression on me. Just watched “10” again on TCM and Julie Andrews is driving a Pagoda. I assume their more extensive list of available creature comforts, small size, and maneuverability made them popular with many urban drivers.
Once upon a time the Miata was considered a chick car, really, it took the internet and the praises of the true believers to make everyone realize it was the truest and most perfect modern sports car money can buy. I hate car stereotypes but we all are afflicted with them, they blind us to a lot of things we’d otherwise enjoy.
The 190SL is really easy to mistake for a 300SL roadster if you didn’t know much about them, and the front end bears an even greater resemblance to the gullwing than it’s big brother. That resemblance is a double edged sword, it instantly garners attention from 300 fans but detractors aren’t wrong when comparing it unfavorably to a 300, the mistake is that they just simply shouldn’t be compared, but the resemblance makes it hard not to. For me personally, the most distinctive feature of the 190SL is my least favorite feature, and it’s those ponton rear fenders, almost everywhere else I actually prefer its design to the 300 roadster
Once upon a time the Miata was considered a chick car,
This. It was a massive fad when it first came out, most of all with young women. I had direct experience of that in the Bay Area at the time.
The whole “chick car” “damensportwagen” label/image has become rather repulsive to me, as it’s demeaning to women, men who own them, as well as the cars. I was trying to make that point in this article at the top, but I don’t think it came across well.
I refuse to participate in discussions when it comes up, as it has here a number of times, except in this way. Strictly speaking, it’s against our comment policy, which does not allow denigrating any individual or group. I’d say women fit into that quite adequately.
It’s used by men to reinforce their insecure male egos.
I would be happy to never hear the term again. How acceptable would it be if we labeled certain cars “blackmobiles”?
100% agree. It’s such a childish thing to participate in, and appropriately that time in my life is where I most remember those automotive connotations originating from, from friends and probably their Dads instilling it in us. (How else would 10 year olds know a “dude car“ from a “chick car” anyway?).
I do have to check myself sometimes, and every now and then I’ll stumble across a old comment of forum post somewhere I made in my late teens and just cringe at the vocabulary. “Chick car” is one of those phrases/words that many of us would say as a substitution for saying “I don’t like it because____” without giving the slightest thought to the derogatory nature of it, let alone the exclusionary effects of it. Male ego originates it, definitely, but inertia from being so overused keeps it popular vernacular. This should by nature be one of the most inclusive hobbies people can have, all kinds of different people enjoy all kinds of different cars, and it benefits none of us who would like it to continue to project a boys club image, it’s been that for too long for no reason.
I remember a few of my high school buddies had a field day when I showed up to school with the Cougar. Chick car, grandma car, milf car, you name it I got the earful. Meanwhile my car was the only one of the group that could do all important for 17 year olds burnouts, and my Mom, not my Dad, taught me how to drive a manual transmission. The whole “chick car” thing didn’t quite stand on much of a foundation in my experiences. Not long after I got my car one of those same childhood friends got a green Miata “hmm… what were you saying about those in 5th grade lunch, Andy?”
My late mum always denied being a feminist – she felt that the movement was condemnatory of stay-home mums like her at the time – but she in fact always rejected any put-downs of women all her life, and brought us six up accordingly. As a result, I felt such terms as chickmobile, etc, were uncomfortable from when I was young. As time went on, and perhaps especially as I found myself liking a whole bunch of eccentric or non-manly-man cars, I realized that such terms were not just demeaning to women but also acts of aggression at large. This kind of stuff is reminds me yet another time that I’m happy to be here now, with such things speeding away into that nostalgic, sweet past that so often wasn’t.
As a by-the-by, I would love to have seen my dear German-born dad daring to use such term as damsenwagen to my mum back in the day, just for the comedy of the explosion that would have rained down upon him. (I should add that it wasn’t – and isn’t – in his nature to have such attitudes, and besides, because he loved her dearly, he knew better).
Did your father’ s opinion about the 190 SL have anything to do with the case of Rosemarie Nitribitt (1957)?
Could well be. I knew nothing of it at the time (1957) as I was all of four.
Frankly, my father’s opinions about cars inevitably were very black and white, and lacked nuance.
I’ll keep it simple. Its a pretty car and I like it.
Well i bought my first 190sl in 2000 and had to sell in 2007. Then i bought again in 2021. The best purchase i ever made. I just love driving this car. I still cannot get my head around its characteristics as its nearly 70 years old! It draws a crowd where ever it goes. But just touring in it is a joy. I now have a chalet in the alps, afforded by my first 190sl… this one will now take me there. http://www.lechatox.com
Oh and i now have the luggage that came with it on special order….!