W118

The project grew out of the Wirtschaftswunder: with West German car ownership exploding through the 1950s, Daimler-Benz wanted a model below the Ponton. An earlier attempt, the Ponton-based W122, was canceled in 1956, and in 1958 chief engineer Fritz Nallinger asked Ludwig Kraus to develop an all-new mid-sized car in-house. The result was startlingly unorthodox for Sindelfingen — front-wheel drive, a 1.5-liter boxer engine, and low-key coachwork with a huge glass area and no traditional radiator grille, a design more than one observer has compared to the W113 Pagoda. Two- and four-door prototypes, badged 150, were completed around 1960.

Production was pencilled in for the newly acquired Auto Union works, but Ingolstadt’s own F102 was already in the pipeline, and when Daimler-Benz sold Auto Union to Volkswagen in 1964 the program died with the deal. Only prototypes were ever built. The idea of a compact Mercedes-Benz then lay dormant for nearly two decades, until the W201 190 of 1982.