Based on current stock market valuations, the world’s big-shot investors are more fired up by bright-eyed EV start-up tech bros than companies like Mercedes Benz that have actually been making cars for a while. Beware the smoke and mirrors, people.
Considering Mercedes Benz invented the car in 1885, you can forgive them for regarding its back catalogue as kinda important. But given that retro is a dirty word these days in the automotive design community, what should we make of the new Vision One-Eleven?
Nerdy car fans will immediately recognise the debt it owes to a 1969 concept car called the C111. This was a lissom, space-age projectile that saw Mercedes’ design team loosen the shackles. Check the copper-infused over black colour scheme and the gullwing doors, themselves a reprise of a configuration Mercedes Benz made its own with the 1954 300 SL.
But the Vision One-Eleven has a much bigger story to tell. It’s a flamboyant trailblazer as Mercedes doubles down on its luxury status, and thrusts ever further upmarket. “It’s very much about icons. Icons make the difference between mainstream and luxury,” the company’s chief design officer Gorden Wagener tells GQ. “Whether or not a designer’s work actually becomes iconic only becomes apparent with the passage of time, but icons define luxury. We love sports cars, we love Gullwings, we love low cars, and we love orange cars.”
The Vision One-Eleven is a fully electric showbiz statement of intent. Although it looks mid-engined, as the original C111 was, it features axial flux motors on each wheel and a big battery pack. These are supplied by a British company called Yasa, which Mercedes acquired outright in 2021 for an undisclosed sum. Axial flux motors are smaller and lighter than the more widely used radial flux ones, and also more powerful. There’s work still to be done but Mercedes liked what it saw.
Wagener sums up his design philosophy in two words – ‘sensual purity’ – and the One-Eleven stays true to that by effectively being one continuous curve. Look at the way the roofline flows into the body and see if you can spot the join. Only its pronounced front and rear wheel-arches interfere with what Mercedes calls a ‘one-bow’ silhouette, but they add a chunk of drama. They’re also a callback to the GQ car award-winning Mercedes AMG One.
The gullwing doors are huge, flush-fitting jobs, with opaque side windows that feature a pixellated pattern. The upper surface is underpinned by strongly graphic aerodynamic elements on the under body. There’s a subtle front spoiler, but things get more aggressive along the side and at the rear, where a massive diffuser and cutaway body section leave a lot of visible rear tyre. Like all automotive creatives, Wagener and his team are clearly influenced by ‘70s and ’80s endurance racing cars. The wheels are concept car huge and their design is inspired by the motor windings used in the One-Eleven’s powertrain.
The ‘60s/’80s cross-cultural interface increases inside. The dashboard is upholstered in a white fabric made of 100 per cent recycled polyester. Eye-popping orange leather covers the armrests on the sills, the centre console, and stretches across the rear into the luggage compartment. The leather has been sustainably processed and tanned using coffee bean husks. The seats are integrated into the chassis, and the driver and passenger sit almost horizontally. The seats are finished in a silver fabric, and the whole thing has a distinct Barbarella/A Clockwork Orange vibe.
The One-Eleven also plays with the ‘lounge’ idea that’s destined to gain traction as autonomous driving inches ever closer to reality. There’s room to seriously party in here. An oblong aluminium and leather steering wheel has drive mode buttons set within it, a small touchscreen beside it handling the connectivity and media. A full-length pixellated dashboard displays information and a Magic Leap augmented reality head-set takes the occupants further into the future. Fun has clearly been had.
“It’s a bit of a spaceship,” Wagener admits. “But emotion always comes first, right? As with every luxury company, the difference comes through the design. Retro is copy and paste, heritage takes the dna and reinterprets it. The surfaces on this thing trigger your buttons instantly. We’re in the tech industry but we have to bring a certain X factor in with that. The Vision One-Eleven is about digital luxury. The base level delivers functionality. The second layer is style. At the top of the pyramid are iconic moments, creating things that surprise you.”
To which end the Vision One-Eleven is more of an entertainment than a car in isolation. In that respect it follows on from the recent Mercedes x Moncler G-wagen. The bigger picture includes creating NFTs live on site at Mercedes’ California design studio, working with digital artist Harm van den Dorpel and others to create the ‘Maschine’ collection. On top of that is a ‘lifestyle collection’ called ‘Limited edition 1 of 111’ that encompasses five individual accessories. These include a weekender holdall in silver, orange and black, sunglasses, and a hoodie. It’s all in the service of Mercedes’ ‘iconic luxury’.
The company is also expanding its Manufaktur personalisation programme, three new Mercedes-Maybach Night Series models demonstrating what’s possible. With the likes of Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce all creating highly prized – and pricey – low-volume specials in their bespoke divisions, don’t bet against the Vision One-Eleven making the hyperspace jump to reality…
