Though high-end sport and luxury cars are my general beat, I’ve made something of a sub-specialty out of driving vintage vehicles—especially those with a three-pointed star on their hoods. So when my friends from the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center dropped a line to let me know that they’d be bringing a rally-prepped 1963 220 SEb Heckflosse sedan to the Amelia Island Concours, I jumped at the opportunity to duck under its triangulated roll cage, slide into its period-incorrect racing seat, hit the starter on its 2.2-liter straight-six, and row my way through its delicate, long-throw, four-speed manual transmission.

All of which begged the question: Why would Mercedes create a rally racing version of its snobbish S-Class, even in the generally WTF?-filled 1960s? And why would the monomaniacal craftspeople at Classic Center go to the trouble of producing a polished, nut-perfect homage to this particular vehicle? Not to go all Martin Buber on this car’s fin-tailed grey ass but, why does any of this exist?