Ugliness sells badly
05/07/2024
The German title of Raymond Loewy's autobiography has once again proved true. In the run-up to Bonhams' Miami auction, the unique and stylistically highly questionable Heuliez Intruder was estimated at 250,000 to 350,000 US dollars. Reality then struck on May 4 at a sobering 72,800 dollars. Which raises the question of whether this was a bargain or not.
The Franco-Germanic intruder was presented at the Paris Motor Show in October 1996. French coachbuilder Heuliez had placed the body of a two-seater sports car with a steel folding roof on the Mercedes-Benz G chassis. However, instead of simply using the shell of the Mercedes-Benz SLK presented in April of the same year, they created something of their own.
The off-road sports car created under the direction of Marc Deschamps (who had been responsible for design at Bertone from 1979 to 1995) followed the same rounded, organic lines as factory Mercedes-Benz concept cars such as the F 200, which was also presented in Paris in 1996, but its short and high design made it look like an SLK on steroids - and would probably not even look that bad with a normal sports car chassis height.
Repainted several times for further salon presentations, the Heuliez Intruder remained a one-off - albeit one that, contrary to common show car practice, was fully roadworthy and even remarkably capable off-road thanks to the unchanged G-base. With 220 hp from the six-cylinder engine of the Mercedes-Benz 300 E-24, the idiosyncratic "off-roadster" also makes good progress on the road.
Even though the auction price for the Heuliez Intruder would have been far more appealing for a Mercedes-Benz trio of 230 GE, 300 E-24 and SLK 320, the Miami buyer will certainly have been delighted with the hammer price of a fifth of the maximum estimate - especially as the one-off was recently restored for 300,000 dollars. In the current age of increasingly absurd SUV fashion, the concept of the high-roofed sports car has enormous potential to increase in value. But maybe he just likes the car.
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