Who knew the original Mercedes SLK concept was so much cooler?

This is the Mercedes-Benz SLK concept from 1994, which was revealed at the Turin motor show. It used to be a reputable biennial show, with the 1994 edition hosting the reveal of the fourth-generation Maserati Quattroporte and about six different Fiat Punto concepts from various design houses, as well as the Mercedes. 

This car was put together under the supervision of veteran Mercedes design boss Bruno Sacco, who was in charge of the official Merc pencil from 1975 to 1999. He’d styled innumerable company hits, but still had enough juice left in the tank to move the game on with cars like the SLK. He wanted a bit of a retro look in there, though, saying at the time: “Styling which refers to nothing beyond current modernity would not be Mercedes styling.” Hence touches like the covered rollover bars behind the seats, which harked back to the 1955 300 SLR. 

Na sicher. You need to be able to sprechen Sie a bit of German to understand where the future roadster’s name was going to come from. Mercedes already had the SL convertible, which stood for sportlich (sporty) and leicht (light). The additional K was for kurz (compact), signifying the SLK’s status as a baby SL. 

It didn’t actually – that wouldn’t appear until this SLK II concept was unveiled at the Paris motor show in 1994, a vision in blue. It’s sort of funny if you think about it, that the original SLK concept didn’t feature the most concept-car-like feature on it. The R129 Mercedes SL from 1989 featured the firm’s first removable hardtop, but the SLK took things up a notch, starting the craze for the innovating folding feature on more affordable cars. In actual fact, the SLK I concept didn’t have a roof at all, it was just intended to showcase the impending small convertible from Mercedes. 

The glossy red interior was probably supposed to hark back to the golden era of the Fifties, but was also an unsubtle reminder that the world wasn’t that far along from the decade that taste forgot, the 1980s. It was a sculpted, minimalist interior, though – a far cry from the fake walnut and endless grey plastic that the production car would end up with. 

The production car ended up being based on the W202 C-Class saloon, with a chunk chopped out the middle, but the concept car was put together bespoke for the Turin show in 1994. It worked, too, none of the shenanigans you might see where carmakers try and get some buzz going around a clay model with alloy wheels glued on. Under the bonnet was what Mercedes called an ‘advanced’ 4cyl petrol engine driving the rear wheels, but it wasn’t anything to get your pulse racing, frankly.

Sadly for almost 30 years into the future, there was nothing particularly crazy about the SLK concept at all – it was a study in engineering safety, with a thickened windscreen, extensively engineered passive safety cell, full-size airbags and the novel addition (at the time) of ABS.

Perhaps not, but it didn’t seem to stop the car being a success – more than 308,000 of them were built between 1996 and the car being yoinked off sale in early 2004. Strangely, the front end of the concept looks more like the 2010 SLS supercar than the SL of the time, with perhaps a touch of the 1997 CLK in the squared off haunches. The production version of the SLK (codenamed R170) had a more elegant, rounded form that arguably better replicated the look of the R129 SL… but it just didn’t look as fun as the concept car.