In the 1950s the Mercedes design department was made up of a motley Cerberus-esque crew comprised of Fredrich Geiger, a typically german techy test engineer, Karl Wilfert, the Mercedes born and bred head of car body development, and Bela Barenyi, an Austro-Hungarian, aristocratic, safety-obsessed, bohemian.

When Paul Braq arrived from Paris having studied under the infamous and somewhat mad Phillipe Chabonneaux, he injected a French sense of elegance and style into the patent-heavy technologically driven department.

At the time, Mercedes was focused most on stability, but visibility was becoming a defining feature.

The Pagoda roof, which took inspiration from the concavity of oriental shrines, was a way of adding rigidity to the boundary-pushing light and airy glasshouse.

Early sketches done by Geiger, ever the engineer and stereotypically German, show a general arrangement for a car, liner and symmetrical, with equal proportions and an austere interior.

Braq by comparison, like m...