My toy car – the Gullwing

The imagination of a child racing at top speed on a carpet representing the most challenging racing circuit. The track conditions are wet, the event requires the driver´s razor sharp concentration. Those are the memories thinking of my first moments with my beloved new toy. The model of the vehicle was unknown back then, in fact it didn´t matter anyway, as long as every race could be won.

Years passed by, the toy car was filtered out by the events of time. Then there was the museum, the Mercedes Benz museum in the city of Stuttgart, Germany. A lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and my past employment experience for the architect who designed that museum, motivated me to pay a visit to the unique building. The building itself was a one of a kind spatial experience, which seemed not to be surpassed by any of the exhibited content. Suddenly I felt like I was falling back in time and out of nowhere a small child was staring at the car, most known under the alias Gullwing. The Mercedes 300 SL was designed with gull- wing alike doors, due to a design construction mistake that wouldn´t allow space for side opening doors. Already a classic at its debut in 1954 at the New York Auto show and today a very desirable collector´s item. I took tons of pictures, I asked nearby people to take a picture with the car and myself, I touched it to feel the sensation of the fast speed races.. Then the museum security told me that I would have to leave the building if I touch it again. Fair enough. Sitting in my studio, slightly bored with repetitive architectural buildings, I decided to model my car in 3D. Not an easy task in order to reconstruct the free-form shape of the legend accurately, but a very fun one. The dashboard got its appropriate textures and the car was ready to render. What about the surroundings? Should I recreate my childhood room with the old carpet as the racing circuit? No, people will laugh. I am more serious now.. Maybe I shall put it in some real surroundings. While I made a trip years ago to Scotland with a rented car (not the Mercedes 300 SL) on the northern highland roads, I was amazed by the beauty and solitude of the deserted environment. The soft fog, the slight drizzling of rain, the warm reddish colors of the autumn trees, the castle in the nearby distance. The final images was born, the memories put a smile on my face.