The Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...

 300 SEL 6.3 started out as a private venture in 1966 by company engineer Erich Waxenberger.
Waxenberger's principle was simple: take the powerful 6.3 litre V8 Mercedes-Benz M100 engine

Mercedes-Benz M100 engine

The Mercedes-Benz M100 Engine was introduced in the 1963 Mercedes-Benz 600 with 6.3 litres, and later also used in the Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3 from 1968 onwards, and even larger, in the 1970s Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9....

 from the luxurious Mercedes-Benz 600

Mercedes-Benz 600

The Mercedes-Benz 600 is a large luxury automobile offered in several variants worldwide. Introduced in September 1963, it had very few competitors, these being Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Cadillac Fleetwood 75, the stretched Lehmann-Peterson Lincoln, and the Crown Imperial Ghia...

 limousine, and fit it into the regular Mercedes-Benz W109 S-Class model which only had 6-cylinder engines at that time. The result was a nearly 2-tonne saloon with performance similar to most dedicated sports cars of the era.