10% off your first order — create a free account

Create free account
✓ 14-day returns ✓ Hand-checked before dispatch ✓ Secure checkout
My account

Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing Dark Red Minichamps 1:18

Sold out
Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing Dark Red Minichamps 1:18 110037218 Diecast
1 / 8
Minichamps' 1:18 diecast reproduces the Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing in Dark Red, the 1955 production car whose upward-opening doors and fuel-injected straight-six followed directly from Mercedes' 1952 Le Mans-winning racing programme. The gullwing hinges remain the model's defining feature. A cornerstone piece for any vintage-classics or Mercedes-focused display.
Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing Dark Red Minichamps 1:18
Current price: £97.00
Out of production

This model is currently sold out. Enter your email and we'll let you know when it's back in stock.

Browse Mercedes models
Pay securely with
Specifications
Car Brand
Mercedes
Model Manufacturer
Minichamps
Scale
1:18
Material
Diecast
Model Condition
Used Model
SKU
110037218
Genuine articles Sourced from manufacturers
5-layer carton Foam-filled interior
Hassle-free returns 14-day no-quibble returns
Secure payment Bank-level encryption

About the Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing Dark Red Minichamps 1:18

TL;DR: Minichamps' 1:18 diecast reproduces the Mercedes 300 SL W198 Gullwing in Dark Red, the 1955 production car built on the engineering of Mercedes' 1952 Le Mans-winning racing programme. Upward-opening doors and a fuel-injected straight-six define one of the most recognisable post-war sports cars ever built.

Few production cars trace their engineering as directly to a racing programme as the 300 SL does. Mercedes' racing department built the doors upward for structural reasons, and the road car that followed kept them, largely because there was no better solution available.

The Gullwing Hinge as the Model's Defining Test

The doors exist in this form because the W194 racing car's lightweight tubular space-frame chassis had high door sills that ruled out conventional hinges, and Mercedes carried that structural solution straight into the production W198. Minichamps' hinge mechanism has to swing the door upward through a wide arc and hold it there without drooping, and the resistance through that hinge is noticeably firmer than a conventional forward-opening door casting, since the geometry has to fight gravity rather than simply pivot. The doors cut deep into the roofline, and the shut line where the door meets the sill has to stay tight despite that unconventional swing path, a genuine tooling challenge that separates a well-executed Gullwing casting from a merely adequate one.

Dark Red Paint and Period-Correct Detail

Dark Red suits the 300 SL's rounded, chrome-heavy 1950s bodywork particularly well, and Minichamps' paint depth holds up under direct light without the flat, single-tone look that undermines cheaper castings of curved 1950s bodywork. The chrome bumpers, wheel trim and side vents, one of the SL's most photographed details, are picked out crisply rather than moulded in a single silver tone. Cast in zinc alloy, the body carries genuine weight, and the interior features the correct period dashboard layout and the SL's distinctive banjo-style steering wheel, moulded with enough definition to read clearly through the glass.

A Cornerstone for Any Mercedes or Vintage Display

At around 21 centimetres, the 300 SL's compact, rounded proportions sit comfortably in a standard cabinet row, though its instantly recognisable silhouette tends to draw attention regardless of what surrounds it. Diecast construction is the right call for a subject built entirely around a functioning opening feature; a sealed resin body would reduce the gullwing doors to a static styling detail rather than the mechanical solution they actually were. This is one of the rare subjects where the model's headline feature and the car's genuine engineering history are the same thing, which makes it a sound anchor piece whether the surrounding collection is built around Mercedes specifically or 1950s sports cars more broadly.

Same marque, same scale

Collectors also bought

Browse all 1:18

10% off your first order

Create a free account and claim 10% off your first order — from hundreds of collectible 1:18, 1:43 and 1:12 models by Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and more.

Create free account Browse the collection
Collectible 1:18 scale Porsche model on a clean studio backdrop — Models118 first-order offer
0