Green light for the Mercedes-Benz Goodwood Festival of Speed line-up

Mercedes-Benz will showcase its illustrious motorsport heritage and its latest model range at the 2012 Goodwood Festival of Speed (June 28-July 1) – and also promises to spring a couple of surprises for the 150,000 visitors expected.

“There is so much
to look forward to at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. We celebrate 60 years of our SL-class with the latest model arriving in the UK just in time for the Summer. There will also be plenty of new delights to see, in what is a very busy year for Mercedes-Benz in the UK,” said Marcus Breitschwerdt, President and CEO, Mercedes-Benz UK.

The theme for this year’s Festival of Speed at Goodwood House, the home of Lord March, is ‘Young Guns – Born to Win’. Mercedes-Benz cars and drivers have been winning since the dawn of the motoring age, and the company has brought more than its fair share of young guns to prominence through the years, most recently Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton.

A rich heritage in motorsport is evident in the four historic racing cars that have been nominated to tackle the famous Goodwood Hillclimb – and the people recruited to drive them. Mercedes-Benz Classic is celebrating 60 years of the legendary W194 300 SL, which was a highly successful competition car two years before the ‘Gullwing’ road-going model appeared, and 75 years of the 1937 W125 Tripoli Grand Prix car, which went on to further successes that season.
      
One of the Mercedes-Benz ‘fin-tail’ saloons from the early 1960s, the W111 220 SE of 1963, will also tackle the course. The competition quartet is completed by the 1997 CLK-GTR, devised for FIA GT racing.

The driver line-up is expected to include Klaus ‘King’ Ludwig, a triple winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours as well as multiple championships in Germany; Jochen Mass, a vastly experienced Formula 1 driver and 1989 Le Mans winner with Sauber-Mercedes; Bernd Schneider, the 1997 FIA GT champion and a master in German sports car racing; and Paul Stewart, a celebrated Formula 3 driver before going on to form his own Grand Prix team with father Sir Jackie Stewart.

There will also be an exciting display of exciting new models that will be on sale in the UK in the not too distant future as well as a selection of the latest models that are already on sale.

The transfer of technology from racing to sporting road cars is shown in the five-model AMG display at Goodwood. Four AMG coupes and convertibles  – the SLS AMG Roadster, C 63 AMG Coupé Black Series, CLS 63 AMG and SLK 55 AMG – will line up alongside the latest addition to the AMG portfolio, the ML 63 AMG.

The new ML-Class Sport, B-Class Sport and the new SL-Class – the first Mercedes-Benz series production model to be crafted almost entirely from aluminium, and featuring a number of technological ‘world firsts’ – will be on show with the C 250 CDI Sport Plus, the refreshed smart and an E 350 CDI Cabriolet.

The C 63 AMG Coupe, SLK 250 CDI and E 300 BlueTEC Hybrid will all be on display at the Moving Motor Show stand while a selection of Mercedes-Benz AMG models, including the SLS AMG Coupe and Roadster will be available to test drive. Test drives can be booked through the Mercedes-Benz Retailer Network.

Posted in: Classic/Vintage,Goodwood Festival of Speed 2012,Gullwing,Heritage,Lewis Hamilton,Luxury,Marcus Breitschwerdt,Mercedes-Benz,Mercedes-Benz UK Ltd.,Michael Schumacher,Motor Sports,SL-Class