AMG Took 2nd In The Spa Francorchamps 24 Hours With The Mercedes 300 SEL 6.8 50 Years Ago In 1971

AMG got their first big success with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 some 50 years ago at Spa. This really put the German tuning company on the map literally overnight. The shock second place with what was essentially a large Mercedes luxury car with an automatic gearbox.

At 3 p.m. on the 24 July 1971 there were nearly 80 starters for the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. In the middle of the field the was large red W109 Mercedes saloon. The car wasn’t a works entry but one from a small tuning firm founded by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in 1967.

It wasn’t a certainty for success as the big car weighed in at 1,635 kg, some 195 kg less that the production version, was up against much smaller and more nimble competition. The SEL was the long wheelbase version too.

However, the car was suited to the Spa circuit, at 14.863 km with many long straights that can be driven at full throttle. The car held its own in the field, trading some of the nimbleness to outright speed and reliability. By daybreak only 23 cars remained with some complete factory teams out. Only 18 of those crossed the line with the AMG coming in second.

This S Class predecessor was heavily modified. The main focus was the engine and the chassis. For the time the figures were very impressive, 315 kW or 428 hp from the 6,835 cc engine. Up to 620 newton metres of torque, the top speed of more than 265 km/h and 0 to 100 km/h in 6.1 seconds.

AMG was yet to become a well-known brand, and in 1971 was relatively unknown outside the world of Mercedes-Benz tuning. The letters of AMG are the two surnames of the founders Aufrecht and Melcher and the town Großaspach where they both worked on engines together for the first time. AMG’s headquarters was in a former mill in the town of Burgstall.

Of course, by the end of the race at Spa, overnight the AMG company gained a reputation in racing. Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz took the 300 SEL 6.8 to a sensational second place finish overall and were victorious in their class.

The renowned ARD news programme “Tagesschau” reported on the racing success in Belgium. The magazine “auto motor und sport” celebrated it as a “stroke of Swabian genius”. The “incredible second place”.

AMG Mercedes 300 SEL 6.8 Reconstruction

What you see here sadly isn’t the original car. As it wasn’t a factory effort there weren’t the finances to keep the car in storage for the future and it was sold off to an airline company who used it to test landing gear. The high power and high speed making it one of the fastest cars you could have made it the ideal testbed for aircraft landing gear. This meant cutting holes in the floor and altering the structure to accommodate the test equipment. It didn’t take long for the car to be totally destroyed.

The resurrection started in 2006 when AMG found the plans for the car and set about building a replica. It’s as close as it’s going to get to the original and certainly looks the part.

The car can be seen in the Mercedes-Benz Museum from 20 July to 19 September 2021 and is in the atrium of the museum which is free to visit.

Hans Heyer

Hans Heyer is a German racing driver best known for touring car and quite an unusual racing style. But there was one attempt at Formula one for Heyer in the 1977 German Grand Prix.

After coming second with the AMG Red Pig, he raced for AMG again in Can Am with an AMG powered McLaren M8FP.

Heyer also raced a BMW 2002 and 2800CS, a Ford Capri and Porsche and Opel GT. He even raced at Le Mans with a Schnitzer 2800CS, but sadly retired after 70 laps. He later finished second in the German Racing Championship, DRM, with a Ford Capri. In the following year, 1974, he took the European title with a Zakspeed Ford Escort RS 1600.

1975 was the year he won the German Touring Car Championship and that year he won the 1000km Kyalami with peter Hennige and Jochen Mass.

Racing as late as 1979 he came to the UK and won the Silverstone 6 hours in Gelo Racing’s Porsche 935 with Bob Wollek and John Fitzpatrick.

Heyer’s son Kenneth has taken to racing like his father and currently competes with a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup.

For AMG that success 50 years ago was a milestone, but also significant for Mercedes too. This year there were a total of 13 customer team AMG GT3s taking part in the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. One of those GT3s has its design based on that original of 1971 and carries the number 50.