Mercedes-Benz are the racing team to beat at the moment, and back in the 1950s it was a similar story. Teams were run a bit differently half a century ago, with budgets very much smaller than they are today. Racing cars would turn up on the back of a transporter, go racing, and then go home again – there were no fancy mobile workshops, catering trucks or hospitality suites.

We quite like this approach, but the downside was that if one of your racing cars broke, there were few spare parts, and certainly no spare car, with which to fix it. To get around this Mercedes came up with a genius solution; they built a vehicle capable of racing across Europe at high speed to get back to the factory to collect another car – the amazing Rennwagen Schnelltransporter nicknamed ‘Blue Wonder’.

Underneath the weird car-transporting bodywork the Schnelltransporter was a 300SL Gullwing supercar, complete with its three-litre straight-six petrol engine, the first engine ever fitted with direct-injection. And that made it the fastest car transporter in the world.

A vehicle as legendary as that needs a legendary builder, and they don’t come much more so than Firas Abu-Jaber. Firas’ beautiful Model Team recreation of the famous Mercedes even features a stunning 300SL Gullwing to transport. There’s loads more to see on both MOCpages and Flickr – click the links for all the details.