Take a Ride in the Passenger Seat of the Priceless Mercedes 300 SLR That Changed Racing

Let's begin with one of the most famous quotes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

In 1955, Mercedes-Benz, race car driver Stirling Moss and an automotive journalist named Denis “Jenks” Jenkinson did the impossible: They won the Mille Miglia, a 1,000-mile race around Italy with a time of 10 hours, 7 minutes, 48 seconds, finishing 32 minutes ahead of second-place Juan Manuel Fangio in an identical Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR and shattering every stage record along the way. This record will stand for eternity, as the Mille Miglia was halted after the bloody 1957 running.

I say Mercedes, Moss, and Jenks because Jenkinson did not just sit next to his fellow Briton, but as detailed in his incredible article, “With Moss in the Mille Miglia: 1955 Report,” Jenks came up with the idea of rally pace notes and quite successfully implemented them. To me, this article is the greatest piece of car journalism extant. You simply must read it. An example of the man’s writing: “Looking up I suddenly realized that we were overtaking an aeroplane, and then I knew I was living in the realms of fantasy, and when we caught and passed a second one my brain began to boggle at the sustained speed.”

Lucky me, then, when back in 2016 Mercedes asked me to drive a 1956 300 SL Gullwing in that year’s Mille Miglia re-creation. Sure, we’d take four days (I drove for three) instead of 10 hours to drive from Brescia to Rome and back, but golly gee it was fun. So much fun, in fact, that in 2019 when Bentley asked me to navigate—and only navigate—a 4 1/2-liter Blower on the same route, I made a huge, pretentious, still-regret-it mistake, saying something like, “Once you’ve driven the Mille, you can’t be satisfied simply riding shotgun.” Bentley did not reply with, “You’re so right, Jonny! Of course, you can drive our $2,000,000 car on the rally we’re paying to enter, and not our longtime employee who has been waiting his whole career for this chance. Our mistake!” Instead, it simply and quickly found another journalist to take on the Mille Miglia and I sat home on my butt. Yes, I blew it.

A New Opportunity

Fast-forward to the 2025 Monterey Car Week in mid-August. Mercedes rings and asks if I’d be interested in driving a 2009 Mercedes-McLaren SLR Stirling Moss edition and “only” riding in a 1955 300 SLR, both around Laguna Seca, I said yes before the PR man had finished his offer. I’d been humbled by the Bentley debacle (so stupid) enough to have a revised policy of just saying yes. So it was, “Yes, 100 percent.” After I hung up, I was pretty excited about driving the SLR Stirling Moss. I love Mercedes-McLarens, I love glassless crazymobiles like the McLaren Elva, I was friendly with Moss toward the end of his life (I wish I could publish what he told me about Jenks), and I’ve done more than 1,000 laps around Laguna Seca.

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What the 300 SLR Is (and Isn’t)

A bit about the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLRs. These days, most car people know of the nine two-seat SLRs built for the 1955 season because in 2022 one sold for a record $143,000,000(!), making it officially the most expensive car in the world.

Known as the Uhlenhaut Coupe after the lead engineer of the racing program, Rudy Uhlenhaut, that car is one of two production-ready but never-raced enclosed-cockpit cars with gullwing doors built for the 1955 Carrera Panamericana. Most of the other SLRs entered six races that season and won five, withdrawing from one. Sadly, the one the team withdrew from was the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where a 300 SLR collided with an Austin Healy, setting off the deadliest crash in racing history. The SLR’s lightweight (but magnesium-heavy) Elektron bodywork burst into flames, contributing to the deaths of 83 people, most of whom were in the stands watching the race. Mercedes retired its other cars from the contest—and stopped racing for 30 years. The Carrera Panamericana was also canceled that year due to the crash.

$143,000,000 is an insane amount of money for any car, but it tells us the number 722 car, the one Moss and Jenks raced (722 denotes their starting time, 7:22 a.m.), is essentially priceless. Half a billion dollars at least, I estimate. I asked Marcus Breitschwerdt, head of Mercedes-Benz Heritage and self-described “used car dealer,” why on earth he sold off a car like the Uhlenhaut Coupe. He said the Daimler board tasked him with coming up with a way to fund education for young automotive engineers for generations to come; he needed around one hundred million euros. “And we had two [cars],” he winked.

Many years ago, I visited the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Fellbach, Germany, near Stuttgart. I was lucky enough to be wandering unsupervised around the workshop, and the Classic Center happened to be in the middle of a body-off restoration of a 300 SLR. The seats were still bolted in place. I had a sit. Just mind blowing. The M196S engine is a 3.0-liter straight-eight that, like the W194 and W198 before it, was leaned over to the passenger side (53 degrees in this case) to allow for a lower hood. To save on both overall length and crankshaft wear, the engine connects to the gearbox via a gear located at the bottom center of the block. All of it was laid out in front of me, and I sat there, in complete awe, shifting the gears quietly to myself. I hadn’t yet done the Mille Miglia, but I still had an inkling of just how special the SLRs were.

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Strapping Into the Modern SLR Stirling Moss

Meanwhile, the Mercedes-McLaren SLR Stirling Moss is quite dramatic in person. Ridiculously long, with menacing bodywork and side pipes and almost no glass whatsoever. The snout curves down like an inverted kilij. One of the tiny half doors butterflies up, and I climb inside. The car feels almost modern but harks back to 2009, a Benz era I love. There are many similarities in switchgear and vibes between this and the CLK Black Series, an all-time favorite, save for the long piece of bodywork running straight through the center of the cockpit. That was a bit odd, but it did make the thing feel racier. The SLR Stirling Moss produces 641 horsepower from its supercharged 5.4-liter V-8, an insane amount 16 years ago and still pretty good by today’s nutty standards.

“Want to push a hundred-million-dollar car?” asks Nate Lander, head mechanic at Mercedes-Benz Classic North America. Coming over the bridge from the parking lot into the paddock at Laguna Seca, I walked right past a W196 SLR with the number 1 painted in black in a white meatball parked in front of a hospitality box. Within seconds I was walking with Lander back to the entrance. Where should you even touch such an expensive car? Turns out on the upper rim of the cockpit. One hand for pushing the car forward, the other hand on the rear for slowing it down. As we made our way through the crowd, I enjoyed seeing the faces of the people who recognized what Nate, myself, and another Mercedes employee were pushing. Many jaws dropped. Why didn’t we drive it over? I never asked.

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As the W196’s engine fired up, though, I suddenly understood. I was back behind the wheel of the SLR Stirling Moss, and the two side-exhaust pipes of the 300 SLR were pointed straight at my head. Deafening is not an understatement (later in life, Uhlenhaut, who street-drove his coupe with the same motor and exhaust pipes, went partially deaf). Lander commanded me to move the Mercedes-McLaren forward, stating, “That exhaust is like tear gas.” The 1955 car was so loud that I had to look at the tachometer to tell if the 2009 model was switched on.

After a while, I followed the W196 onto the racetrack, and while we had a few moments of fun, we were doing an exhibition parade. We were told not to pass the pace car, and I was given explicit instructions that no matter what, do not pass the W196. It would have been nice to pass the pace car, as for whatever reason it was going very slow. Still, it was fun as I got to drive a rare beast (only 75 made) that at the time of sale stickered for more than $1M. Not bad at all. Now for a few laps as a passenger in the 300 SLR.

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Shotgun in the 300 SLR: Senses on Overload

One thing became immediately clear: Jenks was the perfect man for the job. Moss was many things, but he was not a tall man. In photos taken after the Mille, when both men looked like raccoons because only Moss’ goggles and Jenks’ glasses (the latter famously lost his glasses at one point during the race, but the team was so well prepared that he simply slipped on his backup pair) had kept the greasy mix of oil and brake-dust mung away from their eyes, Moss looks to be about 3 inches taller than his navigator. And at 5-foot-10, I towered over Moss. Upon clamoring into the passenger seat, both of my knees immediately contacted the highly flammable bodywork. I’m not sure how a taller person could have fit. And 10 hours? At speeds up to 180 mph? No thanks. Also: seatbelts? Hadn’t been invented yet.

I wasn’t ready for what happened as soon as the W196 roared down the pit lane. I got very emotional. We’re talking tears, and not from the stinging exhaust. It’s not always a day at the beach, but I so love what I do for a living, and I have much gratitude for the fact I’ve been able to make a living writing, filming, and talking about cars for the last two decades. Sometimes they make me cry. One time, I came around the corner at the sadly defunct Paris Auto Show and came face to face with a 4 ½-liter Blower Bentley, the one Woolf Barnato won Le Mans with. No one else was in the room, just me and a 90-year-old race car. I stood just staring for a minute then began weeping. To triple underline it, how stupid was I for turning Bentley down?

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Here I was again, bawling because of a car. Luckily, I had a helmet on, so no one at the track, including the stern German man driving me around, was any wiser. We’re not surgeons or teachers or soldiers or anything needed or valued by society. Most automotive journalists don’t even like each other very much. But the best of us can accomplish noteworthy things. Jenkinson, however, towers over all of us. He is the giant upon whose shoulders we stand. And yes, sure, in a moment of car-journo stolen valor, I became emotional because I was sitting where he, a fellow automotive journalist, did. It wasn’t the exact same car (this one was chassis number 0002/55 and 722 is 0004/55), but it was close enough. This experience, this opportunity, this stroke of dumb, brilliant luck meant the world. What a moment, and one I didn’t expect. Not from any passenger seat.

Thanks to Mercedes for the opportunity, and as Lander said to me, “And hey—you didn’t lose your glasses or puke in the car!” Finally: Read Jenks’ Mille report!

Funny side note: I once asked Moss when exactly Jenks wrote his race report. Moss said he wrote the entire thing immediately following the race as they drove back to Stuttgart. I couldn’t believe what I heard. As soon as they were done with the trophy presentation, and after performing the inhuman—driving 1,000 miles in just more than 10 hours—Moss and Jenks got into another car, and the former drove 370 miles back to Mercedes HQ while the latter typed it all up next to him. “The team had us so hopped on goofballs that we were awake for days,” Moss said.