StudioTorino Coupetorino: Mercedes SL coupe

Yes this is breathtakingly beautiful. No, it won’t go into production (but that we’ll get to that in a second).

The Coupetorino was created by Alfredo Stola a designer at StudioTorino and Piotr Degler Jablonski a student at IAAD art institute. It was entered into the event "Turin World Design Capital 2008" as part of the "Bespoke Coachwork" category. The idea was to take a Mercedes SL and give it Italian flair. The result was pure sex.

Now comes the unfortunate part... Mercedes will not make anything like this.

The current Mercedes SL is a convertible with a retractable hardtop, so a coupe may be redundant. But even more to the point is that if Mercedes thought the SL needed to be a coupe, there would be no problem to make one, because it has made coupes of the SL before. The last one was based on the SL from two generations ago (R107), which Mercedes used the body style from the 70s and 80s. But the first SL coupe was also the first SL: the 1954 300SL. Right now Mercedes is working on the gullwing SLC supercar, which will likely share some components with the current SL. So, the SL coupe pictured above can’t make production because Mercedes already has the bases covered.