What do you really need in a car? Cup holders? Side-curtain air bags? Hell no! You need huge fins, needle-sharp spikes sticking out of the front fenders, and radar! The '54 Ford FX-Atmos dream car offered all those critically important features, plus whitewalls. You want one, of course.

The question is: would you take the FX-Atmos when you could have a '51 ZIS-112? This Soviet dream car, according to the definitive Cars Of The Soviet Union was the product of Soviet designer Valentine Rostkova and packed an experimental V8 engine behind its Cylops single headlight. So, what's it going to be? Dearborn or Moscow?

Like all great stories in motor racing, Mercedes’s dominating debut is a story of timing, innovation and resurgence, with a healthy sprinkling of treachery on top. It began on a November day in 1953.

It was at the conclusion of the fourth season of Formula One, a mere eight years after the war situation in Europe had developed not necessarily to Germany’s advantage. Dominated by Alberto Ascari in his tiny Ferrari 500, the young sport was about to go through its third major rule change in four years: the 1954 season would drop the Formula Two regulations in place for 1952 and 1953 and dictate a maximum displacement of 750 cc for supercharged engines and 2,500 cc for naturally aspirated ones.

Mercedes-Benz, on the heels of their successful victory with the 300SL Gullwing in the Carrera Panamericana, decided to enter Formula One. The old team which ruled the European Grand Prix Championship with the supercharged Silver Arrows was back. Team manager Alfred Neubauer—the man who invented pit signaling—returned with his hat, trenchcoat and stopwatches, while London-born technical director Rudolf Uhlenhaut was tasked with creating a new car from scratch, codenamed W196 R.

And what a car it turned out to be! The engine a straight-eight, fuel-injected, naturally aspirated 2.5-liter marvel, with power taken off at the middle of the crankshaft, running on a cocktail of benzol, methylene, gasoline, acetone and nitro. It was driven by desmodromic valves—only seen today on Ducati motorcycles—which enabled higher revs than allowed by 1950s springs. The whole assembly was canted 37º to the right to make for a lower hoodline and a smaller frontal area. The car was wrapped in sheets of Elektron, an ultralight and very flammable alloy of magnesium.

By the time Uhlenhaut’s team was done, the 1954 season was already underway, with Juan Manuel Fangio racking up wins in the brand-new Maserati 250F. But the lure of the new Mercedes proved too hard to resist for the Argentine, and after winning two of the season’s first three Grands Prix, Fangio swapped his Maserati for a seat in the W196. After a 15-year absence, the stage was set for Mercedes-Benz’s debut on July 4 at the French Grand Prix, held at the ultra-fast circuit of Reims-Gueux.

Tweaking and testing continued even after Fangio and teammate Karl Kling—who had taken a vulture through the windshield of his 300SL Gullwing two years before in Mexico at 130 MPH—secured the first two positions in qualifying. Fuel consumption was higher than expected, and in a wonderful move, technical director Uhlenhaut hopped in his own Gullwing and raced it all the way to team headquarters in Stuttgart to have expanded fuel tanks manufactured overnight for the W196’s. No vultures were encountered on the Autobahn and at 2:45 the next afternoon, off went Fangio and Kling to begin the 300-mile race.

It was a massacre. The streamlined cars outpaced the rest of the field by 4 seconds a lap. As Fangio took the checkered flag half a car length ahead of Kling, they were the only two cars on the leading lap. Two Maseratis, two Ferraris and a lone Gordini driven by Jean Behra limped in long after them, the rest of the field decimated in the grueling race.

Incidentally, it was on this very day that Germany’s national squad beat what was perhaps the greatest football team ever in the finals of the 1954 World Cup: the Hungarian Aranycsapat, stopped in its tracks after an unbroken string of 33 wins.

The W196 would go on to win 8 of the next 11 races it was entered in. The streamlined body was replaced with an open-wheel version for the more technical circuits, and a young Stirling Moss joined Fangio for the 1955 season.

Mercedes-Benz also entered the car in sports car racing as the 300SLR, with an engine bored out to 3 liters, producing 300 HP. This was the car that carried Stirling Moss to his famous victory in the Mille Miglia—and which, a few weeks later, got catapulted into the crowd at Le Mans, where it became all too clear just how flammable that Elektron chassis was. Over eighty people perished in the flames, including racing driver Pierre Levegh.

The accident spelled the end of the W196 and its brethren. Neubauer withdrew the 300SLR’s from the lead several hours after the accident. At the end of the season, with Fangio claiming the Formula One World Championship in the W196 and the team taking the World Sportscar Championship in the 300SLR, Mercedes-Benz withdrew completely from motor racing.

Fangio would become World Champion two more times. His victories came in cars he had defeated in his Mercedes: the Lancia-Ferrari D50, and for his final championship in 1957, the very Maserati 250F he had abandoned three years previously for the W196.

The 300SLR lived on as Rudolf Uhlenhaut’s daily driver. It was made into a street-legal coupé which Uhlenhaut commuted to work with.

A hyper-Gullwing, capable of reaching speeds of 180 MPH in a sad, gray, post-war Europe, blasting down empty highways at warp speed, forever chasing a racetrack it would never set wheels on again.

On the other hand, it must have made for a memorable childhood for Uhlenhaut’s son Roger:

Photo Credit: Daimler AG, Autocar

I live in Arlington, Virginia, where I've spotted a green 1954 Chrysler Windsor parked on the street several times. I've been waiting for weeks for a clear, sunny Saturday, and today I was finally able to make it over to snap some pictures.
The car appears to be a daily driver. It's usually parked within a few spaces of the same house, and it's out on the street, rain or shine. As I said, it's a '54, it has a flat-head six, and that's about all that I know about it.

this 1954 Lincoln Capri built to full Panamericana specs, a throwback to the era when you could utter the words "Lincoln" and "race car" in the same sentence and not confuse your listeners. A steal at $27,500! You listening, Overlords? [Craigslist Orange County; go here if ad disappears]

The steel company that became a shipbuilding company that became a healthcare company also built cars for a while during the car-hungry era right after World War II. Some of their cars came with McCullough superchargers installed, which was sort of like putting a nuclear reactor in a Liberty ship (here's an interesting article about the blown Kaisers, by the way). And, well, when I saw this 1954 Kaiser Manhattan (go here if the ad disappears) with factory supercharger for a mere $3,000, I almost drove straight to Fresno to get it... until the Commie virus that's taken over my brain steered me back to the idea of getting a Tatra 503-powered ZAZ, that is. But: a supercharged '54 Kaiser! And just look at that thing- why, the right side and front look pretty good, and it appears to have a front seat, so it's 14% of the way there to being a nice running, driving machine! Not only that, you get "a few boxes of extra parts," which may or may not have some association with the car. Just imagine driving this Kaiser with way, way more boost than ol' Henry ever intended for that engine and that garish two-tone paint job restored to its former glory!

Thing is, who drives 1954 cars these days? That's right, really obsessive guys who hang out at car shows and cruise nights and who get a menacing look in their eyes, punctuated by scary facial tics, when you don't acknowledge that their personal machine was the Greatest Engineering Achievement of All Time. Do you want to be one of them? Sure, not all drivers of 50+-year-old hardware are like that, but you'd be on the safe side by going with a more modern factory-supercharged car. For example, you could get this 1990 Volkswagen Corrado G60 (go here if the ad disappears) for the amazingly low price of $2,500. Yes, a blown front-drive European car- if you Taurus SHO guys think you know torque steer, just try driving one of these after the boost has been jacked up a few extra notches... and that's what you'll want to do when you get this Corrado. Of course, you'd have to fix all the stuff that doesn't work first; the seller doesn't list them, because he or she doesn't have to! You know the electrical system is dodgy, and the aftermarket mods paint a vivid picture of this car's recent history: the seller's mouth frozen in mid-"Oooohhh shiiiit!" as the tach needle hovers a grand over redline and the mall-parking-lot light pole emerges from the tire smoke and heads straight for the front left fender... the seller's friends capturing the action on their cellphone cameras. Yes, that's the picture, and that means every component that ever dealt with engine torque, from axles to main bearings, is hovering on the edge of failure. But who cares? Imagine driving this Corrado after you've exorcised the demons and fixed all the broken stuff- it'll be off the scale of the Fun-O-Meter!

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This was the last year that Chevrolet buyers didn't get a V8 option, but at least the ol' stovebolt six now came with a pressurized oiling system. Hmm... that Stovebolt qualifies for Workhorse Engine Of The Day, doesn't it?


There's still quite a bit of early-postwar styling here, but you can see how the look of the '55 evolved.


That great big trunk would have been excellent for moonshine running, but the Fords were just so much quicker in '54. Of course, there was no law saying a man couldn't drop a 265 or 283 in his '54, once they became available.


The more space-agey taillights of the late 50s were cool, but the simpler lines of the early postwar lights have their appeal as well.

I'm not sure what category this thing falls into, and I don't care. I imagine hair-splitting purists of several camps might be outraged by some aspect or other of this car, but it looks good. That's what counts, right?


Blankets over the seats and plywood door panels. The interior could be a work in progress, or this might be the intended end result. Hey, it looks comfortable!


Shave the handles, lose the trim, but keep the hubcaps!


Even though it looks mean without the grille, I'm hoping there's a grille of some sort in this car's future. 1954 was the first year for Ford's new overhead-valve V8, but we don't know what powerplant lives under that hood. 427 Cammer? One can only hope.


Best of all, the owner of this car also has a lowered '47 Plymouth that's equally sweet. Stay tuned!

Our first car is a Frankenstein Special out of the Reno area; after its mad-scientist creator shot a man just to watch him die (but before he got sent to Folsom), he stuck a '54 Packard body onto a '72 Buick frame. We don't know what kind of Buick provided the frame, but we do know it has a torque-bomb 455! No, it doesn't run, but according to the seller it just needs some "minor motor work" to roar off into the desert. Does "minor" mean points and plugs, or bad rod bearings? It'll cost you 800 clams to find that out, cowboy!

You say you only buy projects that run right now? This here 1958 Rambler American (suggested by our tipster pal Alex) is the project for you! It just needs some interior work. Uh, and some exterior work, too. But so what? It runs, and it's got a pushbutton shifter to boot! And fins! There's a bit of confusion about the asking price; the listing title says $500, but the listing body contains the statement "The price is only $600.00 and is as low as I will go."

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Mickey Thompson History [Thompson Motorsports]

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Tequila! Cadillac Recreates La Carrera Panamericana Racer [internal]

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Southern Motor Company [via the Freep]

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