Rally to the Cause in a Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC

April 13, 2015
Story By
John Brooks

Mercedes-Benz is not a brand that one would normally associate with rallying, getting those expensive limousines and coupés all muddy, nein danke! However back in the '70s that is exactly what Stuttgart's finest did, the longer and tougher the better.

Starting with a victory in the 1977 London to Sydney Marathon with a 280, Mercedes-Benz then tackled the maddest, baddest event of them all, the Rallye Vuelta a la America del Sud.

The 1978 edition started in Argentina, then Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and then back to Buenos Aires.

It was 39 days to cover over 20,000 miles; utter madness, but still it was the '70s - cable TV and the Internet had not been invented, so we had to fill the days somehow.

There were 57 entries at the start, including six from Daimler-Benz, and at the finish the top five places were filled by the cars of...Daimler-Benz, the odd man out was in ninth, he probably had to drive back to Stuttgart.

The winner was the Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC driven by Andrew Cowan and Colin Malkin. The Scottish pair amassed 17½ hours of penalties, 21 minutes less than the second placed car and about 40 hours less than the final finisher, 35 of the original field did not make it back to the Argentinian capital.

To show that this result was no fluke, Mercedes-Benz hopped across the Atlantic the following year to the Rallye Côte d'Ivoire. The 450 SLC on display at Bremen was also part of that effort. Another victory for the men from Stuttgart, this time with Rally legends and Champions, Hannu Mikkola and Arne Hertz, were the crew.

The final chapter, for now, in the long distance rally career of Mercedes-Benz came a year later, once again in West Africa. Another legendary rally pairing were hired by Mercedes-Benz and delivered the goods. Björn Waldegård and Hans Thorszelius won the tough and treacherous event, over 3,200-miles long and just 10% of that was paved.

The triumph was bitter-sweet as Daimler management could see the writing on the wall for the project, the era of the Audi Quattro and Group B was on the way, a large production based coupé such as the 450 SLC had no place in that arena. It was not that Mercedes-Benz could not have done it, they had proved equal to any engineering challenge encountered since the earliest days, the management decided a change of direction was needed. The announcement was made just four days after the final win, participation in rallies would cease for the foreseeable future. (Archival photography courtesy of and copyright Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz Classic; all other images by John Brooks)

Rally to the Cause in a Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC

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