I am German and I readily admit, that we Germans do NOT have a knack for styling. We are known for a "Teutonic" appearance in our designs. Of course, most people here are biased as far as the looks of the W113 are concerned, but from an objective point of view, it is not a beautiful car. This is very much reflected in the contemporary desire for the model as opposed to other sporty cars of the period, like the Jaguar E-type or the Alfa Romeo Spider. Not to mention the Ferrari Dino as it was in a different league, price-wise.
This may not be Pininfarina's most likeable car, but back in its time, it was (maybe still is) an exotic and perceived as great looking. The fact that "Mercedes did not want it" really means absolutely nothing. Knowing about the self-absorbed attitude about their products of Daimler Benz management at the time.
What are you saying? You can't improve on a German design, especially a Mercedes design. They simply are the best, objectively, and anything you do otherwise is debasing -- no, bastardizing(!!) -- the car, and you might as well have just bought something else. /s
Indeed, the styling of the Pininfarina coupe is very interesting, and I can imagine if it had a Lancia badge on the front there wouldn't be nearly so many niggles of the design as I'm seeing. The jingoism here approaches Corvette forum levels.
To those that put so much faith and credit in Rudolf Uhlenhaut, know that his decisions were bound by the realities of the market in which Mercedes was operating. A car is not exclusively designed by the styling department. Or any other department (well, the case can be made for the accounting department!). It's a concerted effort to find a happy recipe to build something affordably and sell it affordably for the target market. You build to a price. You design to the expectations built into that category. Perhaps Uhlenhaut would have done so much more with the Pagoda had it not been co-opted by anorak-swaddled old men at the country club and their wives, for the 230 certainly debuted with a certain market in mind:
"A sports car for adults!" and ended with an entirely different market in mind, which definitely manifested itself more as time went on. But back to the Pininfarina coupe. Looking at Bracq's alternative drawings, it is easy to see how a car such as this might have been built in an alternate world, perhaps as a motorsport-oriented variant with its fixed roof.
