Without a Trace - What happened to Mercedes infamous Red Pig?

Original words by Caster & Camber

For those who know what this is, skip ahead. And for those who don’t, this is the Red Pig.

It began life as a late 60s/early 70s 300SEL with a 6.8-litre V8.. It’s not just one of the most important early AMG cars but it is where AMG started. It won races, it won hearts and it won over the minds at Mercedes to even let it exist. So after it had been retired, what happened to the Red Pig? Let’s find out.

Image: Mercedes Benz

To begin, there’s some arguments as to how many Red Pigs were made. It’s mostly agreed that between 3 and 5 were handbuilt by a very small team and never really documented.

When we say what happened to the Red Pig, we mean the original. The 1972 24hrs of Spa overall runner up.

But as with all of these truly mad machines, a rule change would seal their fate. Changes to the European Touring Car Championship would outlaw cars like the Red Pig and AMG left with a car that wasn’t eligible for anything anymore.

So what did they do? Put it in proudly in their museum like so many other important but short lived projects? No, this is AMG before it was officially part of Mercedes. They needed the money so it was sold to French corporation Matra.

Matra had a contract to help develop military hardware and one of those was landing gear for fighter jets like the Mirage.

Because the Red Pig had the weight and the power to test out these systems, it was bought from AMG and immediately modified to work.

Very few photos or even details exist of these final months for one of the most important pieces of performance car history. But, we do know it was lengthened quite a bit and most of the floor removed for the fighter jet landing gear equipment to be installed.

Image: Mercedes Benz

Eventually, Matra lost the contract to do these test so the Red Pig was no longer needed. After being put into storage, the years of being a high speed test bed had not been kind to this one of a king race car, and it was allegedly destroyed.

This was only found out in the mid-2000s not that long after Mercedes takeover of AMG, when they decided to truly celebrate the genesis of the brand and were told, it was gone.

The ones you see today? Replicas.