Cloning a $1M Car Mercedes 300SL With a Modern Engine Chassis

Look at this thing. Just beautiful. This was one of my absolute favorite cars at the SEMA show this year in the Toyo Treadpass. They always seem to find like the weirdest and the coolest cars, but this one's actually built by my buddy John. Thank you so much for having us at your shop, which by the way, I love what you've done with this place. This place is so cool, it's very inspirational to kind of see your artwork as well as your builds all in one place. Thank you. What were you thinking with this build? First of all, what is it? It's a gullwing body sitting on a 2002 SLK 32. It's got all of the features that the SLK would have with the body on top. So we have a friend that has a real gullwing. We made a mold of that, popped the fiberglass one out and sort of shaped it around the SLK. Hold on, let me just stop you here for a second. Just looking at this from the outside, I would not be able to tell. I've shot a couple actual SL gullwings. I've shot like a Land Speed one. I've shot Jay Leno's. Yeah. And just here and there, you know, at Pebble Beach or wherever you'll find them. Yeah. And they're absolutely beautiful. I love the way they look, love the way they sound. But like what made you want to build this? I've always wanted this car. I fantasized about it forever. I even had it tattooed on me a long time ago thinking I'm never going to be able to make one. I got lucky when I met this old man that has one. He let me do what I wanted to do to it. So I don't know. You measured it out, you laser scanned it or how did you? No, we took the whole real car apart and we built a mold around that. So it's identical. Every piece of this car, all the glass, all of the trim, all the chrome is from an actual gullwing because it fits like a glove, you know, like it's real. It's identical copy of the real deal. They have other ones that aren't, they have like the glasses cut out for a Volkswagen, so it's cheaper to do. The car is a little bit shorter, but this is like the actual thing. Wow. For every piece of this, 33 pieces to the car. I mean, cause this is one of those cars where it's sought after enough to the point where people will try to build replicas, right? But you took it to a whole nother level, which is actually taking the actual car, making molds out of every single body panel. So in fact, this is better than the original car. I mean, I think so because the power plant is so crazy in this. It's twice as much power. The suspension is pretty crazy. It's all KW. It just works, you know, like it's my style. A lot of people are like undecided with the wheels and stuff, but I love these wheels and it fits the car and HR actually came out here for two days and measured the car just to make them fit just right. You know, I have the same wheels on my 911. That's right. That's right. That's right. So I like these. Yeah. So these are wheels are cool, but like it's, it's so cool. In fact, this must weigh less than the actual, Oh, a lot less. It's like half the weight of the real car because it's fiberglass fiberglass, but yeah, let's, let's take a walk around here. I mean wheels. Yeah, of course they look great. I went with the exact same finish, just raw metal, but just looking grill is a really difficult piece to get. They just don't sell them anymore. So I had to sort of piece it together. At the end of the day, it's about 30 grand just for the grill. They're not cheap. This begs the whole thing to ask, would it have been easier to actually buy one of these with how much time and effort you spent on building? Not really. Cause like a really crappy one, if you could find one, it's still going to be like 800,000, you know, they're not cheap and then you're going to have to redo all the parts anyway. None of them are going to be good. So I just bought everything new and it happened to fit, you know, and made it work just the front end, just the grill area. 30 grand. Yeah. Um, the glass is really, really expensive and I didn't think it was going to fit, but it fits just, it fit really easy. So that's the original glass, original glass from Mercedes. The rubber is all original. Uh, the side window we made our own because I didn't like the original one. They don't really open. They don't do anything. I liked this whole look. This is actually really cool. This is very like race car. Yeah. And it's more functional than the real one. Cause the real one, you got to pop the whole window out and put it in the back seat. That was a bit much for me. The interior is what really gets me. Like sometimes with these kit cars, it's easy to make the outside look like the actual car. Yeah. But the interior, wow. Like you guys really went out of your way to kind of recreate it or update it in a way. I mean, it has the AC vents. Yeah. It's like 50, it's like half new, half old. The seats are original buckets from a gullwing. So I just changed, you know, the stitching around and stuff. And then I wanted to keep the dash somewhat up to date with the SLK, but it's all custom. Like we moved the Speedo to the center. My friend built a dash. Everything is one off on the interior. It was really tough to do. There's a lot of panels that go inside this car from factory that we have to modify to make it fit with this, you know, this, this look, I guess. So here's the thing. I've shot a couple of your cars already and you always go over the top, but do you think this is your best build yet? Yeah, I like this. I like the Porsche too, the new Speedster, but yeah, this by far the hardest car ever to build because we had no idea what we were getting into. Like there's over 150 mounts holding this car together that you'll never see that we have to fabricate nothing and somehow make it work. There's no instruction book on how to put this car together. You know, absolutely amazing. So functional too. So let's, let's check out the trunk first. I love all the little touches that you do on your cars, like the little trinkets and the accessories. I love the fake money that you put in here. It says motion picture only on this. It's hilarious. Yeah. Oh, I love that. You just go over the top with that kind of stuff and that's what makes it your own. Details are pretty important to me. The liquor. What really set your work apart, especially was the 912 and the 356 that you built that I shot. The accessories and the little touches and the kind of whole steampunk vibe really made it different versus a lot of other builders. It's too easy to follow recipe now, but to, to be able to create, create something completely unique and different. It's, it's really cool. So let's, let's check out the engine bay here. There you go. There's, there's your, there's the touch right there. Yeah. I like copper that copper look like it's really hard to pull that off. I feel like, and you did it really well here. What motor is this then? This is the six cylinder supercharged. What? Yeah. So this is a V6. Yeah. It's about 380 horsepower. It just looks crazy. I mean, you wouldn't expect it to look like that when you lift the hood. Yeah. But like, I really like what you did with the placard here. This is like all off of the original car. Yeah. I still have to stamp it, but yeah, that was kind of tough to recreate the firewall on the SLK started here. So that's how different this car is. You know, like that's why the dash has to be custom built and all that. They're two very different cars, but the wheel base being the same made it so much easier because that's a really difficult part to do. You know, we didn't have to touch that. So what's stock SLK on here? Like the control arms, all that stuff is stock too. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is stock underneath, but it just happened to be the same. Yeah. Yeah. What? That's some crazy luck, huh? Very, yeah. It's very weird. People used to do this with old Corvettes because they were pretty similar too. But, um, and someone took one to SEMA too, and they put a Chevy motor in it and it was really nice, but I felt that it had to have a Mercedes power plant just to kind of make it legit. You know, this is your modern interpretation of what it would be like if it was a new car. Yeah. Very cool. Well, like in all my cars, the, I like this, the cases, the trunks. And again, like on the rest of the cars, it's a fully functional system. There's actually two big woofers underneath this. It's got a really powerful system. You're a kind of an audiophile then, huh? I love the Macintosh though. Yeah. Right. It's fun for me. It's cool because it's, you have to go out of your way to kind of build it into your car. I mean, that's not a small system. No, it's a big system. Yeah. The case is not there for form. I mean, the case is there because it's all used up in terms of space. Yeah. I love it. So what are your plans for it? Are you going to drive it around on the street? Yeah. We just finished like working out all the little kinks and it works now. So we're going to go to a couple of shows, maybe drive it around to the beach or something. And a couple of people want one built for them. So I'm going to, I don't think I'm going to sell this one. I'm going to keep it. And then maybe build another one. I have a rendering being worked on right now for next that's going to be a really wild version of this super wide, like DTM style. Hopefully that'll be the next project, but we'll see all kinds of things being thrown at me. So you got to pick one. That's cool. But like the fact that all of the light controls, yeah, everything, everything, the shifter, the ebrake, everything works. The fit and finish is just so good. I love the tarps and like headliner and stuff. Yeah. The doors were very difficult on this, but that was probably the hardest part of this car is making the doors fit. They just didn't want to go together. Probably spent two months just on the doors, but we got them to function and they shut nice. They work, they work the way they're supposed to. And on the real cars, if you look at the real ones, the doors are never really perfect. Even on the real car, they don't shut right. There's a gap, but we got it to work right. So this is the original striker from the SLK or you guys just fabricated that? Those are from our W124. The original handles were a bit hard to get. We had one, we couldn't find the second one and they're almost 20 grand for the handles. So we use the Kindigit handles, which work identical. They're the same. And then the W124 latches. It's to the point where you've gone so far that people probably think, what the heck is wrong with you for hot-rodding one of these? Yeah. I've gotten a lot of that, but I don't care. I like this. I like it. I like my style. You know, a lot of people really like it too, but there's going to be a lot of negative ----. But it's not like you destroyed one. You created one out of thin air basically. So like, what about this glass? Is this all original glass? It's all Goldwing glass. The trim is not. So I made this trim myself because I couldn't find the right one in time, but it looks just like the other one. Yeah. That's great. Thank you for showing me this. Of course. Thank you for coming. It's awesome. Can't wait to see it on the street. Thanks Larry. So I kind of wanted to walk around with you and kind of see some of your inspiration at your shop. Like what is all this stuff that you have hung up? I used to paint for a really long time. So most of the stuff is mine. A lot of it's like artists I like. My aunt's an artist. She sculpted all this stuff here. All the sumo wrestlers? Yeah. Dancing sumo? Yeah. So this is kind of like you could say it's like my personal garage. Don't really do work for other people. So I've always wanted this. This has always been like a fantasy of mine. So I was able to get it and now I have a place for everything. Yeah. Showroom for display finish stuff. And then we have a whole area back there where we can build and it's just a fun place like my man cave. So what about all this stuff? Like did you design any of this stuff or you painted that? I did everything except the printed ones. These are all pretty old, but I did it for a living for a long time and I had to pick either I wanted like just be an artist or build cars. I couldn't do both. Yeah. So that's why the cars are all kind of funky. The art part of it has a lot to do with it. That's cool. I like that. We just won this one. This one's pretty cool from Stance Nation. Oh, best of show. Yeah. Very cool. Stance Nation. I like this key holder here. Oh yeah. Four Mercedes keys and one Lamborghini. That's a period correct piece. That's awesome. Oh, I love this old stuff by the way. Yeah. I love, I mean how long ago did you build that Honda? 2001. My goodness. My first car. Let's check out your shop here. Looks like you have some fun and interesting projects in the works here. This is a new car we just picked up. This one's for a friend of mine. It's a 63 sunroof 356B car. Oh yeah. Pretty rare. Really cool. So same kind of deal as like the old Outlaw, the last one I did, but this one will have to be a little bit different. Can't wait to see it. This is one of my favorites. This is a really rare red 500E car I'll never sell. I love these. This is a new project too. That's kind of how it's going to look. It's like a California style. Oh wow. And of course these two things broke the internet basically. So that's basically what it looked like when you were making it, but this is an old attempt. Yeah, this is a really, really old mold that this guy named Herman Quint built. And this is actually a replica of the original chassis that I could have used, but I decided not to. It's identical except the original one's tube. This one's square. And you can see how the doors are a pain in the ass. It's a two-piece door. Right. It was very difficult to make it work and this is the original dash. So these are just all off of original mold too. Yes. So this is like the interior structure of the back and there's just ---- everywhere. This is one of the hoods. I think it's really cool honestly because instead of cutting up one of these real cars and hot rodding it and making it fast and making it good looking and repainting it, all that stuff, you're making one out of scratch basically. You can do what you want. Yeah. You can do what you want. And I really like that. I really like that concept because realistically not a lot of them actually existed. Right. I mean, how many did they make? They didn't make that many. And a lot of people in the country actually have this project and it's, it's one of those things where it sits in the garage and they'll take six months to do one door and then they lose interest and then it sits for another couple years. So there's, I'd say at least a dozen people in the country trying to do this, but no one's really done it and finished it. You know, like they're all halfway through or, you know, a quarter way through. So it was fun to get it all done and we spent like five months doing the whole thing from beginning to end. Holy cow. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is when you have a goal like the SEMA show to aim for, like that's why you're, you guys are pushing super hard. Yeah. Gotta get it done. That's super cool. Now we're going to go out. We're going to head out, shoot the SL as well as the Speedster. So that that'll be really fun. Are you excited? Go right a little bit. Yo, that was crazy. This thing smokes out. Oh my God. That was so cool. And it was like, you good, man. We get it. You vape, bro. We get it. Dude, this thing has some serious power. Probably more powerful than any other SL going.