300-SL duplicates - playing the wrong game with expensive numbers

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300-SL duplicates - playing the wrong game with expensive numbers

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Created on October 16, 2023

Text:

Alexander Schmiede

Photos:

Depot3 GmbH

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Bruno von Rotz

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Steinacker Ingenieur-GmbH

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privat

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Daimler-Benz-Archiv

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Screenshot Instagram Kienle

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Screenshot Homepage Gooding & Company

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Screenshot kleinanzeigen.de

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Archiv Hütten

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Screenshot Homepage Kienle

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Caister Castle

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Got the ball rolling: original Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster with hardtop at dealer Depot3. The chassis number 198042-10-002786 was used for another vehicle

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300 SL Roadster, chassis number 198042-10-002786, at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show

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Production order for the fantasy yellow Roadster at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show

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300 SL Roadster number 198042-10-002786 in 1992. Its owner Heinrich Zollinger (pictured right) had already owned the car here for 23 years, with 30 more to follow

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Predecessor and successor: long-time 300-SL owner Heinrich Zollinger (left), buyer Ralph Grieser

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Reunion in spring 2023: Ralph Grieser (left), owner of Depot3, visits the previous owner Heinrich Zollinger with the newly registered 300 SL Roadster

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Ralph Grieser (left), Heinrich Zollinger (center) and his wife inspect the imposing inline six-cylinder engine of the 300 SL

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Ralph Grieser, his wife Zollinger and Heinrich Zollinger with the 300 SL

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Data card of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster, chassis number 198042-10-002786

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300 SL Roadster with the wrong chassis number ...2786 on the Instagram account of the Kienle company

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In-house magazine Kienle News, issue 2/2019...

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... with the article about the fantasy yellow 300 SL,...

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... whose chassis number ...2786 was falsified

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Data card of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster, chassis number ...2765. The formerly white car was stolen in Frankfurt/Main in 1983 and was later given the number ...2786 and painted in fantasy yellow

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300 SL Roadster with the wrong chassis number ...2786 during the 2023 appraisal in Malaysia

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Expert Frank Steinacker inspected the fantasy yellow 300 SL Roadster in the south of the East Asian peninsula state

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The genuine 300 SL Roadster with the correct chassis number ...2786, here at dealer Depot3 in Mülheim-Kärlich, Rhineland-Palatinate

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Clearly visible manipulation: Chassis number ...2786 instead of the original ...2765. The sheet metal section was deformed by the later hammering in of the stamps

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Type plate of the fantasy yellow 300 SL Roadster in Malaysia - also fake

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Modified with different stamps: The engine number of the yellow Roadster consists of two different fonts. It is also "falsified" in another respect: in the matching numbers that Kienle contractually guaranteed, the number of the six-cylinder engine would have had the final digits 2807

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In black and white: the last purchase contract for the yellow Roadster clearly identifies Kienle as the seller rather than the agent

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Secured from a Kienle customer in fall 2023: black 300 SL Roadster (chassis number known to the editors) from a prominent collection, shown here setting up the Kienle exhibition stand at Retro Classics 2015 in Stuttgart

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300 SL Gullwing from 1955 in the car museum at Caister Castle, East England. A vehicle of the same type with an identical chassis number was recovered from another of Kienle's customers in the fall of 2023

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1955 300 SL Gullwing, now in the Caister Castle Car Museum, at a club race in England in 1962

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Chassis number of the black 300 SL Roadster ...0367, when it still belonged to the Belgian collector from whom Kienle had to take it back. In contrast to this...

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... the current chassis number of the same vehicle, now owned by a Bavarian who last bought it from Kienle. Which provokes the question of the extent to which this 300 SL was modified between the two Kienle customers

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The actual original with the number ...0367 - a dove blue roadster with a hardtop. The picture comes from the homepage of the auction house Gooding & Company, which auctioned the car in 2018 in Scottsdale, Arizona, for 1,083,500 dollars

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Likes to hold court: Klaus Kienle (right) in his showroom in Ditzingen near Stuttgart, here with Jean Todt, Ferrari's Formula 1 team boss from 1993 to 2008

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Brief pleasure? Kienle's offer of 40,000 original Mercedes-Benz parts for a negotiable five million euros, shown here as a screenshot of the kleinanzeigen.de portal, quickly disappeared from the web again

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Unintentional, doubly gallows-humorous, but also disappeared in the meantime: Kienle's Instagram post from spring 2023

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Mercedes-Benz 300 SL - Gullwing in rank and file - Retro Classics Stuttgart 2015

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Mercedes-Benz Gullwing at Kienle, of course - Retro Classics Cologne 2018

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Impressions from the Rétromobile 2013 - SLs at the Kienle stand

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Kienle with noble stars - Retro Classics Stuttgart 2017

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Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (1956) - as a gullwing and roadster - naturally at Kienle - Rétromobile 2015

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Mercedes 300 SL (1956) - Gullwings and convertibles at Kienle - at Retro Classics Stuttgart 2012

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Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (1956) - at Kienle - IAA Heritage by Motorworld 2019

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Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster (1959) - with hardtop at Kienle - Retro Classics Stuttgart 2019

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Summary

The case of counterfeit Mercedes-Benz 300 SLs continues to grow. In the meantime, further duplicate existences of both roadsters and coupés have come to light. The focus is on the restoration company Kienle Automobiltechnik, where a raid at the end of May set the ball rolling. We have summarized the current status of the investigation in a comprehensive article.

This article contains the following chapters

Lost in second hand
Stolen and repainted
Further double numbers
A trivial offense?

Estimated reading time: 14min

Preview (beginning of the article)

The bombshell burst on May 31, 2023: At nine o'clock in the morning, a large-scale raid was launched simultaneously at four addresses by the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office to seize evidence. The target: the company Kienle Automobiltechnik GmbH in Ditzingen-Heimerdingen and the private premises of company owner Klaus Kienle and his sons Marc and Alexander. Since then, the scene surrounding the legendary Mercedes-Benz W 198 models, i.e. the 300 SL with gullwing doors and as a roadster, has been in turmoil: which one is genuine - and therefore worth well over a million francs? And which one is a fake - and therefore has no historical right to exist?

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