Mercedes will honor Sir Stirling Moss at Pebble Beach
This year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will be graced by the presence of the legendary racing driver Sir Stirling Moss.
To mark the 60th anniversary of the racing driver’s incredible Mille Miglia triumph, Mercedes Benz will be celebrating all things Stirling Moss at this year’s event.
In 1955, driving a Mercedes 300 SLR, Moss set a record time — averaging 157.65km/h — over the Italian 1000-mile road race, a feat which to this day has never been bettered.
But as well as leaving his mark on the race, in 1955, Sir Stirling helped Mercedes-Benz to truly leave its mark on the world of motorsports.
In that season’s Formula One championship, he won the British Grand Prix, and eventually came second overall in the driver’s championship — pipped to the title by his Mercedes teammate, Juan Manuel Fangio.
While in sportscar racing Moss clinched the Tourist Trophy and Targa Florio alongside his Mille Miglia victory to help secure the World Sports Car Championship for Mercedes. In other words, 1955 is still to this day, Mercedes-Benz’s most successful in year in motor racing.
“Our presence at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is especially in honor of Sir Stirling Moss,” said Michael Bock, Head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Customer Centre.
“We’ll be there with two original vehicles from 1955 — the 300 SLR, in which the now 85-year-old racing driver won that year’s Mille Miglia, and the successful W 196 R Formula One racing car.”
As an honored guest, Sir Stirling will open the field for the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance on Thursday, August 13 in a 300SL Gullwing, while for the main event, the Concours d’Elegance itself, which is held on Sunday, August 16, Mercedes will be entering Moss’s 1955 300SLR, alongside the Formula One championship W 196R racing car from the same year.
However, also being dusted off and shipped out for the event is a Mercedes-Benz C 111, its gullwing door concept car from 1970 that got the crowds so excited that they started placing orders for it.
Although it went from having a Wankle Rotary engine to a production V8 and also went through many minor styling adjustments, the C 111 never made it to production and remained an experimental vehicle, much to many supercar fans’ disappointment.
