One Of The Thirty Isdera Imperator 108i Sells At Auction For €690,000

One of the thirty Isdera Imperator 108i has recently sold at Bonhams auction for €690,000. The rare German supercar was built from the unwanted Mercedes-Benz CW311 concept car from 1978. This wedge shaped car featured the gullwing doors Mercedes made famous with the 300SL.

The design team was headed by engineer Eberhard Schulz (he was responsible for the Mercedes C 111 concept too). He decided to take the CW311 and turn it into a production reality building his own supercars. The company, Ingenieurgesellschaft für Styling, Design und Racing’ (Engineering Company for Styling, Design and Racing) was born in 1981. The Isdera 108i first appeared in 1984 and lasted until 1993, which is quite a long production run. They sold 30 of them in total, which doesn’t sound like much, but each one was hand built to customer order.

There were some differences between the Isdera and the CW311 most noticeably the fixed headlights replacing pop up units, but the car remained true to the original’s shape. Sadly, the roof mounted rear view mirror wasn’t retained.

This car is a series 2 which strangely saw the reinstatement of the concepts pop up headlights and the addition of ducts at the top of the front wings. Some subtle restyling was done smoothing out the lines a little. There are different claims of how many of this generation were built, published figures quoting from 13 to 17 so it’s anybody’s guess.