Beschreibung:

Designed by Ferdinand Porsche who had succeeded Paul Daimler as chief engineer of Mercedes in 1923, three years before the company amalgamated with Benz, the six-cylinder SS 38/250 Mercedes-Benz made its debut for the 1928 season as a 7.1-litre development of the 6.8-litre S model launched the previous year. Both exclusive and expensive, the SS retailed at 35,000 Reichsmarks (£2350) with factory tourer bodywork and just 173 examples of the model were built in four series before production ended in 1934. Mercedes had pioneered the fitting of superchargers to road cars, using technology the company had developed for its aeroengines during the Great War to boost their performance at altitude. So while other makers developed permanently-engaged superchargers that sucked fuel/ air mixture in through the carburettor, Mercedes uniquely employed a supercharger clutched in at full throttle to boost engine power by force-feeding air through the carburettors to cram fuel and air into the combustion chambers. This method could only be used for a few seconds at a time to aid acceleration or hillclimbing and was accompanied by a distinctive banshee wail that Motor described as a “threatening high-pitched whine that is such a joy to spectators at racing events”. Hailed by its makers as “an ideal high performance car for sporting owner drivers”, the SS Mercedes was claimed to be the fastest sports car in the world. That was certainly no idle boast; for tested by Motor magazine in 1931 a fully-equipped 7.1-litre Mercedes SS 38/250, not yet fully run in, clocked over 103 mph [165 km/h] on Brooklands despite a slight head wind. Nor was it just a rapid road car: the successes of the SS on the race track have become the stuff of motoring legend, particularly Rudi Caracciola’s astounding victory in the 1929 Ulster Tourist Trophy when, starting in 70th position, he had forged through the field in the pouring rain, and seen off a challenge from Mercedes’ great rivals, the Bentley team, to finish two minutes ahead of the second-placed Alfa-Romeo. No wonder they called him the “Rainmaster”! “It was almost incredible that on a streaming wet road, the car wreathed in clouds of spray,” wrote H.S.Linfield of The Autocar, “the big white machine should continue to scream by with that extraordinarily high-pitched howl of the Mercedes supercharger betokening the ‘flat-down’ position of the supercharger and a speed of anything between 100 and 110 mph [160-175 km/h].” It must have been spectacular successes like those that aroused the interest of Captain J.F. Conrad Kruse, who took delivery of this SS 38/250, fitted with tourer bodywork built in Mercedes’ own coachworks at Sindelfingen and given the British registration “GJ 4163”, in April 1929. The car was ordered from British Mercedes-Benz through that most distinguished Mercedes agency Gordon Watney Limited, founded before the Great War by a well-known Brooklands racer known for his stylish updates of veteran high performance Mercedes cars. Captain Kruse, a London-based director of the Paris Daily Mail, was no stranger to supercharging, for in 1926 he had had “Sheila”, his long wheelbase Rolls-Royce Phantom I, dry-sumped and fitted with a custom-made supercharger installation by no less an authority than Amherst Villiers. Sadly, he had sold “Sheila” after his wife had declared an aversion to “fast cars”, but he had more luck with his SS Mercedes-Benz, for he kept the car for a decade, selling it in 1939 to R.M.Harrold of Anglesey, who kept the car through the war and sold it in 1945 to John Henry Rosslyn-Smith of Folkestone. Two years later it was sold to Major G.L.H.Huddlestone of Folkestone and Cheshire and in 1952 was owned by J. Austin of London. In 1954 the Mercedes was sold to Peter Pauling, son of the distinguished chemist Linus Pauling, the only man ever to be awarded two non-shared Nobel Prizes, for Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962). Peter Pauling, then in his early 20s, had come to England in March