About 30 years ago, on one of their first dates, Paul Potratz asked his future wife, Christy, to name her dream car. She answered without hesitation: a Mercedes-Benz 280 SL. This year, according to the company, he built her one for her birthday. That car has now become a product line. Helderburg, the Northwest Arkansas design and engineering house Potratz founded, is taking commissions for a limited series of re-engineered 280 SL Pagodas, with pricing starting at $355,000.

It is a notable turn for a company known for one vehicle. Helderburg says it was founded in 2019 and has built more than 300 custom Land Rover Defenders. Garden & Gun, in a profile of the high-end Defender market, reported that the work is split between England and Potratz’s estate in Northwest Arkansas, with interiors of Scottish leather, German wool and exotic hardwoods. The 280 SL is the company’s first project built around a Mercedes-Benz.

Helderburg Takes Its Defender Method to the 280 SL Pagoda

Potratz described the Pagoda as a personal project first. “Over the years, I looked at Pagodas and talked to builder after builder, but I could never commit to how the cars were being built,” he said in the announcement. “So I built one the Helderburg way, using a numbers-matching 280 SL from the year Christy was born. When a friend saw it, he asked me to build one for him and his wife. That is exactly how our Defender builds started.”

Each commission begins with an authentic, numbers-matching car that the company restores to showroom condition and re-engineers in Germany for modern highway speeds, according to the company. The bespoke Defender program continues unchanged, it stated.

The pitch leans on scarcity. Mercedes-Benz built 23,885 280 SLs between December 1967 and February 1971, the company said, and more than half went to the United States. “That is not many cars for the entire world,” Potratz noted. “For decades, they were treated as everyday used cars. Many were driven hard, parked outside, and left to rust. Because a proper restoration often cost more than the car was worth, many were never saved. Honest, numbers-matching cars get harder to find every year, and I believe the 280 SL will only become more desirable.”

Inside the Helderburg 280 SL: Engine, Paint and Cabin

Every car keeps its factory 2.8-liter inline-six, verified against the original Mercedes-Benz data card and rebuilt in one of three performance tiers. The top specification makes up to 248 horsepower, the company said, against 168 for the factory engine. A custom exhaust is tuned to remove cabin drone.

Bodywork starts with a process the company calls First Light. Shells are stripped to bare metal, inspected and reinforced, then dipped in a cathodic KTL e-coat that carries primer into closed frame sections a spray gun cannot reach. A 12-stage paint process follows, applied to both sides of every panel. Each color is mixed by eye, used on a single commission and retired, according to the company.

Underneath, the chassis gets proprietary suspension, the Aegis braking system, custom alloy wheels and updated power-assisted steering. Cabins are trimmed in hand-colored Scottish, Scandinavian or Italian leather. Air conditioning sits behind the original dash architecture, alongside a Pinnacle audio system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

“A Helderburg 280 SL should be as easy to drive to dinner in town as it is to push hard on a winding road,” Potratz said. “These cars were designed around the autobahn, and we wanted owners to feel what that means on their own roads.” Each car also carries the seven-year Helderburg Worldwide Concierge program, which the company describes as unlimited miles with on-site technician service wherever the owner lives.

The price sits above what restored examples have brought at auction. A fully restored 1971 280 SL sold for $257,600 at RM Sotheby’s, one of 830 built that model year. The gap is what the company is asking buyers to pay for rebuilt mechanicals, a modern chassis and a one-off finish. It has not said how many cars the series will include, so the first deliveries will show how deep the demand runs.