Lost for words are some reviews with this exact version of CMC´s overdue novelty that other manufacturers like Minichamps and NOREV had done long ago. CMC seek to overwhelm collectors with details, materials and functions that allegedly only someone who knows the real car inside out, says Iain Tyrell, can fully appreciate, when scaling down usually inevitably requires simplification to the point of deleting a lot of details and functions the original car might have.

This recent CMC release again offers a plethora of details, materials and functions you will not find on what CMC would consider as lesser manufacturers´ models. With the tools provided, you can loosen the wheels´ nuts and perform a wheel change with the spare in the boot if you want. The metal hub caps come extra and need to be attached. The metal door handles can be swung out like on the original car. The ashtray on the dashboard opens, the sun visors move, and the metal windscreen wipers can be lifted from the windscreen like real ones, when on other models you´d be breaking them in the attempt. Carpet has become normal on most models, even in the boot, and quite a few manufacturers now do opening fuel doors and extending antennas, but real leather on seats, dash, center tunnel, and perforated as a headliner on the detachable hardtop, remains unique. Behind the folding leather seats, you find a collapsed cloth soft top that looks as if you could close it, which it does not on the hard-topped versions, but does on models that come without hardtops. Those will have winding side windows too.

This one has the detachable hardtop instead, which does not come off easily. It seems so fixed that you feel tempted to lift the entire model by the roof, but the front will come off the metal ball pins on the windscreen when forced upward and the lift the hinges on the rear and slide out. It then is replaced with a half body painted, half leather tarpaulin flap that comes extra. Without the hardtop, the two ball-topped pins on the chromed windscreen´s frame do look a little odd, like a goat´s or devil´s horns, we have to say though. Magnets would have been aesthetically more pleasing.

So in contrast to some other reviews, our seasoned collectors´ jaw does not drop in awe enough to become speechless and look past certain things. Which brings us to the engine bay of the 300 SL, which on the original, both Gullwing and Roadster, is such a tight squeeze that the transmission can only be taken out via the cabin and the engine had to be famously tilted sideways to accommodate it, and yet the bonnet needed the right of the two long domes to fit (with the left one added for symmetry). And yet, despite this mortgage CMC have tried to scale down far more details under the bonnet than any other model manufacturer. Most collectors will now drop their jaw in awe and be overwhelmed by sheer detail, while some engine enthusiasts will start exploring the details, discovering and, comparing with the original car, identifying every tiny detail. This is what a CMC is made for, for the Iain Tyrrells amongst collectors.

Here I have to admit that this is not me, but the Tyrrell´s-Workshop-like scrutiny was done by a fellow collector who presented the same model on modelcarforum.de before I could. And he found the flat piece with the hole behind the engine block where two chassis struts are joined with two silver screws rather strange, as if something had been meant to be screwed into place there, as if something was missing. Comparing it to his Minichamps 300 SL Roadster and photos of the original car, he found chassis struts to be missing there, attempted to add these parts with an adequately tiny screw into the existing mounting point and then found that the bonnet would no longer close. Together, the forum community found that the struts that are vital on the original car for the vehicle´s structural integrity and stability are missing on all of CMC´s 300 SL Roadsters (while Minichamps ´ old models have them). So this is no QC issue, but obviously CMC had planned them, maybe even produced them, but found out upon assembling the prototypes that they had miscalculated and it didn´t fit. What now? Back to the drawing board? Obviously, the answer at such a late point was to just not install these parts. This is at least the conclusion from what we see. We reached out to CMC´s general manager, and his reply was to draw our attention to how detailed a CMC model is compared to competitors´ products. Competitors had it easier by making so much simpler models. He says that the strut had to be sacrificed to accommodate the engine in all its detail, as the engine would not have fit in past the strut; even on the original car has to be removed to fit the engine. He says he did not want to fit a fake strut, not leading to a mounting point down beneath. From the forum member´s attempt to do just that, it seems this wouldn´t have fit anyway.

Markus Mohn may have a point there: For example, Paul´s Model Art/Minichamps does not have the VDO temperature sensors on the cooling water pipes. The CMC has two of them; only that I cannot find this on any photo of original 300 SL Roadsters from that era, and it does not make sense. From other sources, I have a photograph of the vehicle scanned by CMC which, in contrast to most 300 SL Roadsters, oddly has this second mysterious probe.

Markus Mohn closes his email expressing the hope that we will appreciate the CMC model for all its details. And you´d better not mind if you are interested in one of the many upcoming versions of the 300 SL Roadster, as they will all be the same under the bonnet. But can an Iain-Tyrell-minded, detail-obsessed engine-enthusiast collector, at whom CMC clearly aim, look past issues and happily buy this, especially for what CMC ask? Or are you disappointed? If you had a Paul´s Model Art, would you buy a CMC? Or do you prefer the solidly made NOREV at an RRP less than 20% of the CMC?