Rudolf Uhlenhaut - The face of Mercedes-Benz racing

Rudolf Uhlenhaut is considered the face of Mercedes racing, because of his great engineering talent, but also because of his great talent on the race track.
Born Uhlenhaut was born on July 15, 1906 in London. In his childhood, he moved with his family first to Brussels, then later to Bremen. He completed his mechanical engineering studies at the University of Munich, as he had a great fondness for skiing. In 1931, he was hired as an engineer at Daimler-Benz in the experimental department under Fritz Nallinger.

Rudolf Uhlenhaut - technical director of the racing car department.

In Uhlenhaut's early days at Daimler-Benz, he worked in the test department. Here he worked on carburetors and participated in the development of the Mercedes-Benz 170 V. In 1936, Rudolf Uhlenhaut took over responsibility for the technical development of racing cars and became technical director of the racing car department - and thus a major part of the racing history of Mercedes-Benz. The optimization of the Silberpfeil W 25 marks the beginning of the era of the Mercedes Silver Arrows.
The special feature of Rudolf Uhlenhaut's way of working: in order to be able to identify problems better, the Mercedes engineer got behind the wheel himself and driven on the race tracks - and with great success: the result of the optimization was the Mercedes Silberpfeil W 125, with which Rudolf Caracciola became European champion shortly afterwards in the fall of 1937. The car was superseded by the Mercedes Silver Arrow W 154, which dominated in the 1938 and 1939 seasons.
After the Second World War, Uhlenhaut had the idea of incorporating the Type 300 engine into the next Mercedes racing car. In 1952, Mercedes was able to win major sports car races thanks to this idea. Later, Rudolf Uhlenhaut was then on the Board of Management of Mercedes and eventually head of passenger car development until his retirement in the fall of 1972.

Mercedes 300 SL - Uhlenhaut's masterpiece

The Mercedes 300 SL is still considered Uhlenhaut's masterpiece! Derived from the idea of fitting the Type 300 engine into a Mercedes Silver Arrow, the legendary "gullwing coupe" Mercedes 300 SL (W 198) was created in 1954 and was intended for road use. Rudolf Uhlenhaut did not own a passenger car for most of his life. However, he developed the closed version of the Mercedes 300 SLR for the 1956 racing season. Due to Mercedes' withdrawal from racing after a tragic accident involving a Mercedes racing driver in 1955, Rudolf Uhlenhaut used the car as a company car. This is how Uhlenhaut's Mercedes-Benz 300 SL "Uhlenhaut Coupé" came into being. Only two copies of this model exist to this day: One was sold for 135 million euros, the other copy is on display in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

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