The Engine Fitted To Stirling Moss’s Mercedes 230 SL Was Hand-Picked Based On Dyno Results

The late Sir Stirling Moss was a man in a hurry, and that included when buying his cars, as the story behind his 230 SL reminds us.

Widely regarded as the greatest driver never to win a world championship, Moss drove for Mercedes’ legendary Silver Arrows team in the 1950s and won the 1955 Mille Miglia road race with an incredible average speed of almost 100 mph (160 km/h), meaning he had plenty of friends at Benz’s Stuttgart HQ.

And those friends came in handy when Moss decided in the spring of 1966 that he wanted a new W113 Mercedes SL. The model had been introduced three years earlier with a 148 hp (150 PS) 2.3-liter fuel-injected inline six, but Moss wanted something closer to the 2.5-liter 250 SL that wouldn’t be available until the following year.

That turned out to be an easy fix for the shiny-domed speed-merchant who got Mercedes to sell him the 1966 Earls Court Motor Show car, having first persuaded them to build it with the bigger 2.5-liter motor then only available in the 250 SE sedan and coupe. Although both engines were rated at the same power, the bigger six had 159 lb-ft (216 Nm) of torque versus 145 lb-ft (197 Nm) and felt faster on the road. Certainly Moss’s car would have felt faster because the original German production documents contain instructions that engineers hand-pick an engine for the Herr Moss’s SL that had performed the best in dyno testing.

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And that wasn’t the end of Moss’s special requests. He also had Mercedes install a special pop-up rear vent in the removable hardtop, a feature not available to regular SL buyers, but one vaguely reminiscent of the rear vents fitted at the trailing edge of the roof of the earlier 300 SL Gullwing.

Moss, who died in 2020 aged 90, kept the car for a couple of years, and after passing through several owners hands (and changing color in 1970) it’s set to go under the hammer with Silverstone Auctions at the end of August, where it’s expected to fetch between £100,000-120,000 ($121,000-145,000).

Although the clocks show it has covered just 79,485 miles (128,000 km), it will require some mechanical recommissioning, primarily to the brakes, and not just because Moss miles are probably like dog years. But the car is beautifully original and comes with stacks of history backing up its famous owner, including a picture of Moss’s old team boss Alfred Neubauer waving him away from Stuttgart for a staged pic when Sir Stirling went to collect it.