Legendary Mercedes-Benz designer Bruno Sacco died last week at age 90, and he leaves behind a legacy that helped shape Mercedes into the powerhouse that it still is today. Sacco was so impactful on the brand that it can be hard to imagine anything but classicly, conservatively attractive machines when Mercedes-Benz is uttered, but the truth is, many older Mercedes-Benz automobiles were not great-looking cars.
Oh sure, Mercedes products might have always been respected for their engineering and safety advancements, but people bought Jaguars for their styling despite the fact that they might catch on fire. Pure analytical reason seemed to be behind the shapes but no real passion.
Obviously, there were exceptions. We fawn over the 300SL Gullwing and Paul Bracq’s Pagoda SL, but the bread-and-butter sedans? Here we had a problem. Consider the lumpy-dumpy “Ponton” bodies:
And here, a “Heckflosse” design. These had tailfins, for Chrissake! In the sixties!
In the mid-1970s, the soon-to-be ubiquitous W123 was looking a bit less stodgy; still rather boxy and dull but something (or someone) was causing a change.
Then, in 1979, I opened up a car magazine and saw something I wasn’t expecting: a Mercedes sedan that I might buy because of its styling. That is, if I weren’t five years or so away from getting a driver’s license and had the equivalent of $120,000 or so in today’s money. The car was the W126 Mercedes S-Class, and compared to Benz products from years before it looked a bit like it had been penned by someone outside of Germany.
That’s because it (sort of) was. Bruno Sacco, the head of Mercedes Benz’s styling department from 1975 to 1999, was born in Udine, Italy and trained in Turin as an engineer.
Analytical Yet Beautiful
What was so different about the W126, and the many Sacco-designed cars that came after it? Much of it has to do with the fact that Sacco was promoted to Chief Engineer before he headed the styling department. You can see how Sacco was able to seamlessly blend aerodynamic efficiency, safety concerns, and durability features into a very Teutonic-looking package that happened to be an attractive car. Premiering in 1979 as a 1980 model, the W126 S-Class sedan was followed up by the C126 hardtop coupe several years later.
Cars like the Audi 5000/100 and the Taurus get credit for being the first mainstream “aero” car, but the W126 can easily lay claim to the title. Take a look at a line drawing of the car. Notice how it’s almost a fastback, and from the top view, the body tapers in at the front and back. It’s all very subtle but effective; you’re getting the kind of “jellybean” car that some buyers balked at when they debuted in the mid-eighties while still giving the vibe of an upright German sedan.
Let’s look at some other details. Those grey rocker panels and bumpers acknowledged that painted sheet metal was a bad idea for these areas of any car, a feature copied endlessly by other makes.
Notice also how the bumpers continue all the way to the wheel openings and eliminate the usual seam you have on most cars. What’s also great is how the bumpers on the American specification cars extended out slightly to meet the 5MPH impact standards, but they didn’t look appreciably worse than the European models.
That’s a stark contrast with the W126’s predecessor (the W116) with its horrendous park bench bumpers and round lights. Yikes!
Family Resemblance
Sacco’s major design principles at Mercedes involved what he called Horizontal Affinity and Vertical Affinity. Horizontal Affinity meant that, in Sacco’s words, that “A Mercedes-Benz must look like a Mercedes-Benz,” regardless of the model. Vertical Affinity meant that the cars needed to have a timeless elegance where the owner never would feel that they were driving something dated looking.
You can easily see that with his lineup of cars during the eighties from the W126 down though the mid-sized W124 and even the R129 SL, the brand language is consistent.
BMW and Audi cars seemed to follow this same principle as the eighties wore on, yet somehow Sacco was able to imbibe each level of Benz with a unique identity and not the “cut the sausage to a certain length” result you see with some other German brands I could mention.
Moving Forward
What do you do when everyone copies your work? Like when a certain Japanese company (cough Lexus) takes your flagship sedan and almost duplicates it verbatim? You need to make a move.
As rational as the eighties Mercedes products were, Sacco actually took some risks with the round-eyed look of the W210 E-Class in 1995. The gamble paid off and translated well into the smaller and larger Benz sedans and coupes of the following years.
Sacco’s influence continued through the nineties; the last car he had a hand in designing was the R230SL before his retirement in 1999.
A Proud Legacy
Sacco’s cars may seem less than exciting to a casual observer, but after working in design for decades I realize how much he had to balance to create designs that lived up to the reputation of the Mercedes-Benz name. The real beauty and genius of his designs was in the details, that way that he effortlessly juggled aerodynamics with safety concerns and created vehicles that would still look good years down the road. More importantly, he designed for a brand and not just an individual car. Indeed, Sacco’s proudest achievement, he claimed, was the small 1983 W201 sedan (sold here as the 190E), a car that really pushed the Mercedes into the entry-level (BMW 3-series) size while not giving up any of Mercedes’ core values.
Sacco’s favorite design? The fact that, in retirement, a dark blue 1989 C126 560SEC lived in his garage in Stuttgart should tell you all that you need to know.
Would you pay $20,000 in 1997 money for a seven-year-old, 100,00o mile car? I did, and I kept my Saccomobile for 14 years and kind of wish I hadn’t traded it for my e61 BMW wagon in 2011 (yes, I’ve owned only three cars in almost thirty years). It appears in the wedding albums of at least half a dozen couples that we’re friends with that were too cheap to rent a limo and wanted something “less tacky” at their nuptials.
You can toss around words like “Vertical Affinity,” but few cars can live up to such values. These Sacco-era Benzes did just that. When people at gas stations looked at my quarter-of-a-million mile twenty-year-old sled and told me what a beautiful, fancy car I had, it proved that Bruno Sacco did his job very well. I’m glad I was able to benefit from his efforts in a small way.
I Figured Out Why Old Mercedes Are So Hard To Modify: Project Ski-Klasse – The Autopian
For most people, when they think Mercedes-Benz, they’ll likely think of a car that looks like what Sacco designed. That’s how influential he was to the brand. His work was simple, classic and iconic.
“When people at gas stations looked at my quarter-of-a-million mile twenty-year-old sled and told me what a beautiful, fancy car I had, it proved that Bruno Sacco did his job very well”
For as hard as you are on the W123, people say the same thing about my 85 300D. And it is in sufficiently poor condition that the recent hurricane quite literally blew a ton of paint off it.
Very interesting how took the existing design values and ran with them.
The w123, especially in 240D and 300D trims, is the people’s Mercedes. They’re the car that shuffles the masses the world over, even to this day.
The w126 is the dictator mobile and I love mine dearly.
The W123 is a good looking car, if a bit chunky at the rear. Visually, it’s more remarkable for looking so purposeful than being beautiful, however.
The W126 carries over a lot of that visual capability with the proportions of a proper luxury car. It stands out as the kind of car that really can do everything for that reason. Like a Hollywood actor that does his own stunts. Fancy, but can get its hands dirty.
I can confirm that everyone (except my spouse) loves the Sacco Benz.
My w126, with 317,000 miles on it’s unopened diesel mill, still constantly gets compliments nearly everywhere I go.
I actually had one guy honk for my attention in a drive-thru to comment on how he wants a car like that because “If I had a car like that, my wife would ride with me. She hates my convertible.”
My 5 year old finds it funny all the random people that stop and talk to us when we’re out doing errands.
The C126 is a glorious slab of Patrician German-ness and I have wanted one for a loooong time now.
Loved all of his designs. The four doors more than the two doors. RIP.
Except for a tiny handful of cars, I have never liked Mercedes designs and that’s especially true of the Sacco era.
When I lived in Germany and friends were snapping up secondhand Mercs like chili fries to ship home, all I could muster was a shrug.
As life went on and some friends and relatives climbed on the bandwagon, they learned not to ask for my opinion. I readily concede that technically Mercedes are superior rides, but these folks were seldom attracted by anything other than the looks or maybe how they thought they’d be perceived for owning one. Me? I’d just hit the snooze button and wait for something else to come along.
Different strokes and all that, which is fine when it comes to aesthetics. I have noticed something, though: whether it’s the Bishop or Adrian on Autopian, or other writers with design expertise, I almost never like the cars they rave about. I think there is probably a factor of the “practiced eye” that sees things I don’t and appreciates those qualities. I have the same issues with most modern art.
Anyway, the thing I can appreciate is the Bishop’s eloquence in expressing his admiration for the Sacco Mercedes era.
Thanks! Truth be told I prefer the looks of a Series III XJ6 or even an E32 BMW 7 over the W126 I bought, but keeping and daily driving a car for 13 years and hold together and still look good? Neither of those cars would have done the job.
Your dislike of Mercedes designs reminds me of a comment Jeremy Clarkson made a number of years ago.
“this was designed by Bruno Sacco, which translates to Brown Sack”.
Apparently Clarkson wasn’t a fan either.
C124 owner here. One of things you come to appreciate driving a Sacco-era design is the way engineering and styling are blended just right. Take a detail like the mono-wiper, whose design contributes to the car’s low drag yet covers more of the windshield with its M-shaped movement. Or the asymmetrical mirrors, or the consistent and chunkular switchgear interface. With 30+ years and 130k on the odo, my Benz floats more smoothly and quietly at 80mph than my nearly new Outback. And gets more thumbs-ups.
Well done, Bruno. RIP.
Hot take; the W126 sedan should’ve had something more like the coupe grille, with the W201 and 124 following in those footsteps. The “Mercedes Grille” had been copied to death by Detroit in the ’70s and the worst part of that for M-B is that those copies looked more cohesive on the malaise-era Broughams, with their padded roofs and faux-wire wheelcovers, than on the otherwise tautly rational Sacco-era Benzes.
Many people have converted the W126 to a C126 front-end. It looks…odd. Like the nose is too small for the rest of the car.
https://www.benzworld.org/attachments/frontamg-jpg.254327/
I actually think BMW did a better job of distinguishing models around this time. The W201 and W124 are nearly indistinguishable from a distance. The W126 looks appreciably different, but much of that can be attributed to the fact it’s a chungus.
Regardless, the late 80’s and early 90’s absolutely slapped for German styling. Slam dunk after slam dunk from all 3 IMO.
I think all of them (namely BMW and Audi) did a better job of this in the 80s than in recent years.
I think Audi is the only one left making conservative, handsome cars (although I admit that seems to be changing with the hideous facemask grilles of late). BMW has gone straight garish and Merc has gone full bar of soap.
That’s not to say all of them are ugly, but merely that Audi seems to have translated the styling of this period and made it modern, whereas BMW and Merc seem to have abandoned it.
In the Benz community, there’s a generally agreed-upon 2000ish turning point corresponding to the Chrysler merger. Prior, MB built cars from engineers, essentially for engineers. Cost was not at the top of list of considerations. That was abandoned when raiding the Chrysler parts bin became more profitable and MB decided to compete with lesser brands.
The real issue was that Mercedes products were getting absurdly expensive in the late eighties and early nineties because of the qualities I love so much (make it the best regardless of cost). It made sense to spend the money if you were going to keep the car for 20 years, but that’s sadly not a profitable marketing strategy. Most people ditch the new car after five or six years and sell it to losers like me.
Being indistinguishable from a distance was the idea. When Mercedes announced they were making the W201, many were skeptical a compact would lower their brand image. After it was released, they were lauded for the design having matched their other vehicles so well.
So is this not “cut the sausage to a certain length” to a tee?
Well, if you ignore “from a distance”, you’re right. From far enough away, all sedans look the same.
No, because they had to do a bit more than shrink the design to get the proportions right.
The issue that can arise is actually on the other end of the spectrum: what if your $120,000 range topper looks too much like the cheapest car? Mercedes seems to have avoided this though the years, but others (the Audi A8 in particular) have not.
While I adore the Audi A8, I cannot deny that you’re entirely correct. I think part of why I like the A8 so much is because it’s a large sedan that doesn’t look ostentatious.
Personally, I would de-badge mine and let people wonder why my A3 is so porky.
Yes, styling cues across a lineup can level out the entire brand image, often at a level less than hoped for. Sacco instead elevated a compact to the level of their flagship model without bringing the rest down. That’s why he considered the W201 his greatest achievement.