Jay Leno knows his cars. So when the well-known television host, comedian and car collector asks Victoria-based Coachwerks Restoration to work on one of his fleet, it says a lot.
And right now, Coachwerks is doing some mechanical refurbishment on Leno’s 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing.
The company is recognized as one of the world’s best restorers of Mercedes 300 SL vehicles, which were produced from 1954 to 1964. They are known as the “Gullwing” because they look like a gull in flight when the doors, which swing upward, are open. A complete refurbishment of one of these vintage vehicles usually takes about 18 months and costs about $1 million.
In January 2024, Coachwerks sold a 300 SL for a world-record US$3.4 million. It was “a significant leap forward as far as the highest price ever paid,” says Coachwerks operations manager Dave Hargraves. Seventeen years earlier, the company sold a 300 SL Mercedes roadster at what was then a world record price of US$525,000.
“That was a record we thought would stand for eternity,” Hargraves says. “We were all high-fiving each other because that was just the greatest thing we’d ever seen.”
While Coachwerks will work on other models, the Mercedes SL 300 is its main focus.
Hargraves calls the Gullwing the world’s first supercar. “It’s a road-going race car that was totally revolutionary and way ahead of its time when it came out,” he says.
Amid the financial collapse of 2008, Coachwerks thought that might be it for its business. “We are certainly a want, not a need,” Hargraves says. But 2008 to 2015 turned out to be some of Coachwerks’s best years ever.
“People lost faith in conventional banking. They wanted to buy tangible assets, and they turned toward collector cars and art, and we saw prices just absolutely skyrocket,” Hargraves says.
Coachwerks doesn’t advertise, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, it goes to meets like the Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach, California. Beyond that, it’s word of mouth. Most of its business comes from the United States.
“Without sounding like I’m bragging, we’ve become globally recognized as one of the best in the industry,” Hargraves says. “And one way that we’ve really been acknowledged is we have had a few different celebrities send us their cars.”
But Leno’s car is “really special.”
“Jay is probably one of the most significant car collectors in the world,” Hargraves says. “And for Jay Leno to find us and send us his car, it’s a pretty significant accolade and a really important feather in our cap.”
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