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The coupé's distinctive upward-opening doors were not a styling flourish but a technical necessity: the 300 SL's tubular space frame ran high along the sides of the cabin, leaving no room for conventional, floor-reaching doors. Only the open roadster received a lowered section of frame and, with it, conventional doors.

The 300 SL was an exceptionally fast production car for its time and helped shape Mercedes-Benz's reputation as a builder of sporting cars beyond its saloons alone. The combination of a tubular space frame, lightweight body parts and, for the period, an unusual level of performance made it a deliberately positioned exceptional model within the line-up of a mass-market manufacturer.

Buying a historic 300 SL, the traceable history of the car and the matching of chassis, engine and body numbers matter above all, since no other Mercedes model of that era carries as strong an incentive for forgery or inflated valuation. Technically decisive are the condition of the tubular frame for accident damage and corrosion, the tightness of the mechanical petrol injection, and the state of the seals on the upward-opening doors, which quickly start leaking if wrongly adjusted.