The 1960s were arguably the high point of Mercedes-Benz design. While some prefer the more ornate automobiles of the 1930s and others admire the charm of the three-pointed star?s postwar machines, the 1960s brought us the Heckflosse (launched in 1959; the name means ?fintail?); the stately W108, which deleted the Heckflosse?s eponymous tailfins; the W114 E-class harbinger; and, perhaps most notably, the pagoda-roofed SL.
Designed to be less full-race than its predecessor 300SL and more sporting than the four-cylinder 190SL, the 230SL launched in 1963. Many find the W113 cars, designed by Paul Bracq and Béla Barényi, to be the most beautiful of all Mercedes two-seaters. Another contingent, naturally, insists that loveliness is not always enough?that a certain beauty requires a measure of beastliness. And that’s how we come to this LS1-powered Pagoda SL.
Less than a decade ago, automatic-transmission Pagodas were a reasonable buy. They could be found for under $10,000 in decent condition. Since then, W113s have gone the way of air-cooled 911s, Citroën SMs, Alfa Romeo Montreals, and other gems of the era that seemed undervalued at the time but command wallet-punishing prices today. So we understand why, way back when the LS1 was the hot engine-swap ticket, some guy might?ve thought it prudent to take a Pagoda and excise the Mercedes straight-six. Numbers-matching originality was not yet rewarding enough to argue against the swap.
In its day, Rudi Uhlenhaut took a W...