Mercedes-Benz W112

The Mercedes-Benz W112 is a luxury car that Mercedes-Benz built from 1961 to 1967 and sold as the 300 SE. Its principal form was a saloon on the W111 Fintail chassis and body, but it also came as a long-wheelbase saloon, which appeared in March 1963 and was renamed the 300 SEL in 1964, and as a coupe and cabriolet introduced in February 1962 that share their Paul Bracq styling with the W111 220 SE. All used the fuel-injected 3.0 litre M189 six-cylinder engine, the largest the company had built at the time, with power steering, automatic transmission and air suspension as standard. Mercedes-Benz made it a stopgap flagship to fill the gap left by the ageing 300 Adenauer until the much larger 600 arrived in 1963. High price and limited demand kept volumes low, with 5,202 saloons built, 3,656 short and 1,546 long, and 2,419 coupes and 708 cabriolets.