Cologne Carnival - Or: a Mercedes in a Ferrari costume
04/29/2024
I have not yet fully recovered from the shock that the Bertone Carabo is in fact a completely different color than I always assumed, when the evil reality prepares to destroy another childhood misconception that has been stored away as fact for decades. The press release on the occasion of the new Ferrari special show at the Loh Museum is to blame. Alongside all the red racing cars, there was a 250 GT SWB on display whose color scheme looked surprisingly familiar to me.
A wide black, red and gold stripe runs across the black bodywork from the radiator grille to the rear bumper, and the number 8 is emblazoned in a large white circle on the doors - just like on the Bburago kit of a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL that I put together when I was a kid. Of course, at my single-digit age, I still lacked the journalistic skepticism to question the historical accuracy of this decoration. I simply accepted it. German car, German colors - it'll be fine.
That's what you get for being so gullible. At least the displacement of three liters fits. After that, the similarities between the prototype and the model become much less obvious. For as strange as the Teutonic decoration on the Italian racing car may seem, it is at least correct on the short 250 GT with chassis number 1807: Willy Mairesse and Wolfgang Seidel competed in the Tourist Trophy in Goodwood for the Scuderia Colonia in 1960 painted and numbered like this.
There, however, the other Ferrari drivers gave them a run for their money, especially Stirling Moss in the now much more famous number 7 with the white banderole around the nose. Mairesse and Seidel finished eighth, six laps behind Moss. Perhaps a better result would have been possible with Wolfgang von Trips as the third driver. However, although perhaps the most prominent co-founder of Scuderia Colonia was registered for starting number 8, he did not drive the black, red and gold Ferrari.
However, he did have an indirect connection to the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. Trips drove one of the gullwing coupés in the touring car race at the 1955 Swedish Grand Prix. However, it was not black, but silver - and the Scuderia Colonia did not even exist yet.
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