One might think the era of great barn finds is slowly but surely over. Following the classic car boom of the last decade, almost every barn and shed should have been scoured for lost and potentially million-dollar automotive heritage. However, the latest coup by the Bavarian Gullwing specialists HK-ENGINEERING proves otherwise.
Following a call from the grandson of the original owner, the experts from Polling made their way to Portugal. There, on a cork tree plantation near Lisbon, a 1955 300 SL had been resting for around three decades. The grandson's father had once decided to restore the car so that it would look exactly as he remembered it from his childhood. Due to the high cost and time required for such a restoration, progress halted after disassembly. The legendary sports car slumbered in a dark warehouse for what felt like an eternity and was gradually forgotten.
But this luckily wasn’t the end of this story. The family, whose history is closely tied to the Gullwing, contacted the team from Polling to end the car's sad fate and allow it to shine in its former glory once again. Because of this, the experts did not just fly to Lisbon but traveled directly to the Iberian Peninsula with a trailer to bring the restoration project back to Bavaria immediately.
On-site, the experts quickly realized the uniqueness of this mission. This was far from a botched project or a pile of rust; it was an honest car with a transparent history. While the world kept turning, this 300 SL had simply stood still in time. The configuration in which the 300 SL was delivered 71 years ago was particularly fascinating. Classic silver-grey metallic paint met a dark blue leather interior and rare center-lock wheels. It was a true dream for the team's historians, fully supported by all the original documents.
The improvised cork tree marriage
The greatest challenge was of a technical nature. The body, the chassis, and countless individual parts had been stored separately for years. To make the highly sensitive body transportable and transfer it safely to Bavaria, the chassis and the delicate Gullwing body had to be reunited on-site. Without modern tools or lifts, this undertaking in the middle of the plantation required a good deal of improvisation.
A local cork tree was quickly converted into a lifting tool. The mechanics installed a system of chains and pulleys on one of the strong branches. To ensure that the fragile sheet metal of the Gullwing moved completely evenly and without warping during the lift, a special lifting frame was used to balance the load perfectly.
The entire Gullwing body lifted off the ground and hung completely free under the cork tree for a brief moment, creating an image that no one involved will ever forget. Millimeter by millimeter and remarkably smoothly, the bodywork was then lowered until it was reunited with the chassis after decades of separation.
The team captured exactly this magical moment, when the car comes to light for the first time and the marriage is celebrated, in an emotional video. The gripping film documents the spectacular recovery up close, letting the viewer feel the tension and showing the collective sigh of relief when everything fits together precisely.
After the vehicle was provisionally bolted together and all remaining parts were carefully loaded and documented, the transporter set off on the 2,500-kilometer journey to Bavaria. It was only during a joint dinner in Lisbon that the team realized what had happened: a dormant family project had turned back into a complete Gullwing.
Today, the car is in Polling, where the careful restoration begins. The most beautiful part of this story, however, will likely be the final chapter, when the grandson of the proud original owner travels to Southern Germany to finally see his grandfather's Gullwing exactly as it was when it was first picked up from the Mercedes-Benz dealership: as a brilliant, road-ready masterpiece.
