04.02.2025The luxury sedan that took second place at the 24 Hours of Spa

On July 25th, 1971, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL AMG with starting number 35 crossed the finish line of the 24-hour race in Spa as first place in its class and second overall. The racing team's name contains three letters from a previously unknown company that would make this race famous overnight. The letters are AMG and stand for the two company owners Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher and their headquarters in Großaspach, where Mercedes Benz vehicles are tuned.

AMG turns an accident vehicle into the 300 SEL racing sedan, now known as the "Red Pig", which was classified by experts in the scene as unfit for racing. This makes the two drivers Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz, together with AMG, all the more history-making on this day in July. The label WERK83 takes up this story and turns it into a model in scale 1:18. The model has steerable front wheels. The cockpit was faithfully recreated by the label WERK83.

Clemens Schicktentanz and Hans Heyer compete against some serious opponents in Spa. Chevrolet Camaro, Alpina-BMW 2800 CS and Ford Capri are the vehicles behind which well-known drivers such as Hans-Joachim Stuck, Jochen Mass, Toine Hezemans, Willy Kauhsen, Achim Warmbold, Dieter Glemser and Niki Lauda have taken their seats. Hans Heyer, who drives the start, manages to jump from fifth place to third place in the first lap. At the end of the 24 hours, the sedan has completed 308 laps and has not suffered a single technical defect. Due to its performance and size, the vehicle is subsequently given the name "Red Pig" by the press.

The W109 series was built by Daimler from 1967 to 1972. Since the almost 1.8 ton vehicle suffers from very high wear on the brakes and tires when driven wildly, Mercedes quickly gave up trying to construct a racing car out of it. Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher did not want to leave it at that. They rebuilt a crashed car, gave the engine a five-speed manual transmission with a racing clutch and increased the displacement to 6.8 liters. All other measures were very classic: sharper camshaft, lighter connecting rods, Mahle pistons and a racing exhaust system.

In the end, the red pig produced 428 hp with a maximum torque of 620 Newton meters. The top speed was 265 kph. The interior remained largely untouched. The sedan was therefore launched with power steering, air suspension, carpets, door panels and a dashboard with fine wood trim. The fenders of the original body were widened slightly to make room for the 10x15 inch and 12x15 inch magnesium rims that were left over from a C111 test car.

Unfortunately, the story of the red pig ended just as quickly as it began in 1972. The regulations, which limit the engine capacity of the vehicles used to a maximum of five liters, unfortunately disqualified the 300 SEL. The original vehicle that was used in Spa in 1971 is unfortunately not in the Mercedes-Benz Museum as many people assume. The French armaments company Matra bought the vehicle at the time because they were looking for a vehicle that could accelerate to 200 kph within 1000 meters to test aircraft tires. After that, the trail of the red pig was lost. Today, experts suspect that it was scrapped in the late 1980s. All vehicles that can be seen at trade fairs today are therefore replicas of the original with varying degrees of detail.

Mercedes-Benz AMG 300 SEL 6.3 #35 2nd 24h Spa 1971 Heyer, Schickentanz 1:18 WERK83, RRP €79.95, item-no.: W18030001