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A remarkably original 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster is heading to auction with Gooding & Company at Pebble Beach Auctions 2026, carrying a pre-sale estimate of $1,200,000 to $1,400,000. Unlike so many surviving 300 SLs that have been stripped down and rebuilt over the decades, this particular roadster has never been comprehensively restored, and it still wears its factory-applied colors and original Roser leather interior.
Mercedes-Benz introduced the 300 SL Roadster in 1957 as an open-top companion to the legendary Gullwing coupe, adapting the coupe's tubular chassis so that conventional doors could replace the coupe's signature upward-swinging panels. Production ran through early 1963, and Mercedes-Benz built just 1,858 examples in total, making every surviving car a scarce piece of postwar sports car history.
According to the auction house's history file, the car's first owner was Charles Kraus of Hinsdale, Illinois, who took delivery at the factory in 1958 and specified a red canvas soft top along with a thick, fitted leather tonneau cover, one of the rarest options ever offered on the 300 SL. Kraus kept the car for 41 years before it passed to California collector Don Sears in 1999, then to Kirkland, Washington collector Ken McBride in 2003, and finally to its current Southern California family in 2005, who have owned it for more than two decades.
In 2023, the current owner sent the roadster to Paul Russell and Company in Essex, Massachusetts for an extensive engine rebuild and mechanical recommissioning that touched the brakes, clutch, fuel injection, ignition and charging systems, reportedly totaling more than $250,000 in invested work, all while preserving the car's original, unrestored character. The car also wears a factory hardtop finished in red to match its rare soft top and was showing just 77,675 miles at the time it was catalogued for sale.
According to Hagerty's Valuation Tools, a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster in number 3, or Good, condition currently carries a price guide value right around $1,000,000, with values up roughly 3 percent over the past year alone. Hagerty's data also shows several open-top 300 SLs trading well above seven figures in recent months, including a 1962 example that sold for $1,518,500 and a 1959 car that brought $1,458,500, both through Bring a Trailer earlier this year. Against that backdrop, a numbers-matching, largely original example with such a well-documented ownership history and rare factory options helps explain why Gooding's estimate sits comfortably above the broader market's midpoint.
The sale comes as the collector car world descends on California for Monterey Car Week, where Pebble Beach Auctions 2026 joins a packed schedule of sales; our Collector's Guide to Monterey Car Week 2026 rounds up what else is crossing the block this year. Gooding's docket also includes other blue-chip machinery, echoing the kind of headline results we covered when Nick Mason's McLaren F1 GTR was consigned to RM Sotheby's Monterey sale. And for readers tracking where the wider market stands, our recent breakdown of the July 2026 collector car auction market offers useful context on how six and seven-figure classics have been performing heading into this week's sales.
Cars like this 300 SL Roadster are becoming harder to find every year. As more Gullwings and roadsters get pulled apart for cosmetic, numbers-matching restorations, survivors that retain their original finishes, interiors, and mechanical components only grow scarcer, and rarer still, more desirable to purists willing to pay a premium for authenticity over showroom shine.
