Someone recently filed a patent application for a four-door pillarless version of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG coupe. Yes, you read that right. Even more interesting: Mercedes isn't denying it's their patent.
Here is all the information we could glean from the document so far and our guess as to what it might look like.
The news comes to us first from Autoblog, who noticed the patent filing and spoke to representatives from Mercedes, but were unable to get the company to state what kind of vehicle this thing is going to be, or what kind of production we are going to see of it.
The Mercedes representatives did not deny the veracity of this document, which makes it more likely that it is an official Mercedes patent. What we don't know is if this is just a random drawing, someone having fun with the media, a plan for a future concept, or an actual idea for a real product.
The doors, as you can see, are rear-hinged, so this SLS will not only have gullwing doors, but also suicide doors. This is a combination rarely seen outside of custom Hondas from the Middle East, let alone on an official vehicle of the most conservative, Germanic carmaker in the world.
We haven't found any details in the patent document about the 6.2 liter V8, nor have we found any specific reference to a change in wheelbase, though by the looks of things that's probably much a given. The little knobs you see in front of the rear seats look like another set of control knobs for the SLS' infotainment system, but we suspect they are the results of lazy copy-pasting of the front seats.
The patent filing is specifically for an automobile with a gullwing door that can close on its own, that can have at least one other door mounted next to it. For all we know, this could be a patent application for the basis of a gullwing four-door S-class.
Because patent drawings are meant to be legally defensible but not particularly instructive, our own Jason Torchinsky made up this mean drawing of what it might look like. Kind of RX-8-like, don't you think?