Mercedes-Benz isn’t exactly known for its rally heritage, but for a brief moment in the late 1970s the company decided to throw some effort into the sport by building a pair of 450 SLC 5-liter Rallye. It actually won a few events and might have carried on with a bit more luck. With more development, the five-liter eater might have had some more success through the 1980s. Unfortunately the program was dropped in 1980, but an intrepid shop in Germany has carried on the legacy with its own SLC rally car, and by the looks of things it rips!
Ingo Höppner of Vintage Car Tech built this monster of a Merc and takes it vintage rallying all around Europe. Everything about this car is amazing from the rally flaps and bumped out fenders to the raucous blat of the exhaust note. Most people don’t really care about rallying, but they might if more cars sounded and looked like this. A luxurious mile-eating grand tourer turned into a wild tail-sliding stage rally sporting machine is absolutely my cup of tea, and hopefully it’s yours, too.
Make your Monday a little brighter by clicking the play button, kicking the video to full-screen, and cranking up the sound in your headphones for a glorious twelve and a half minutes of pure Mercedes-Benz V8 shout. There’s nothing quite like this to kick you out of your mid-afternoon doldrums slump. Hell, put it on repeat and watch it three or four times, just to feel something. We all deserve a little rally car treat to make the rest of our day slightly more enjoyable. Rally on, little Mercedes. Rally on.
