Gullwing sports car from Germany - long before the 300 SL
The sports car that a German inventor named Herberg Gomolzig from Wuppertal presented to the press in 1949 was intended to be streamlined and energy-efficient. A few years before the Mercedes Benz 300 SL, he had placed a body with gullwing doors on a VW Beetle platform. These doors were held open by coil springs and even included the two-part windshield. The rear could also be folded up and it was planned to replace it with a box or a bridge.
Manufacturing costs were to be reduced by using parts that were as flat as possible or evenly curved. Thanks to a 25% reduction in air resistance, significantly improved driving performance was expected compared to the Beetle. However, the project probably remained stuck at the prototype stage. At least some of the ideas survived, and we can still find the gullwing doors on various sports cars today.
High-resolution photos of the prototype can be found in the Zwischengas archive.
