Mercedes-Benz 540K

The grandeur of the 1930s

The 540K was Mercedes-Benz's flagship in the second half of the 1930s — the last, most imposing expression of the classical roadster before the war swept everything away. Beneath the endless bonnet lay a 5.4-litre straight-eight with an engageable supercharger: the 'K' of *Kompressor*. When the driver pressed the throttle fully home, the blower cut in with a howling note and power rose from around 115 to 180 horsepower — enough to drive this heavy, graceful car well beyond 160 km/h.

Only a few hundred were built, most with hand-formed coachwork from Mercedes' own atelier at Sindelfingen. The finest was the two-seat *Special Roadster*, with its long tail, sweeping wings and concealed hood — today among the most valuable pre-war cars to come to auction.

Luciano Vittori sets the roadster before the fairy-tale castle of King Ludwig II — two monuments of Bavarian grandeur mirroring one another. The fresco treatment lets the silver and the stone weather together, as though car and castle came from the same century.