There are certain cars of legend so rare and so exclusive that it is difficult to imagine anyone tampering with it. The Mercedes 300 SL, perhaps better known as the Gullwing (due to its top-hinged doors), is one such car. Just 1,400 models were ever made, 80% of which were sold in America, making it the first Mercedes sold in bulk outside of Germany.

Luckily, this 1,000 horsepower Gullwing drag car is not an authentic 300 SL, but a custom labor of love by Swiss drag racer Stefan Winter found by the fellows over at Autoblog.

Images: Das Autoblog

Rather, Mr. Winter (such an appropriate Swiss name, don’t you think?) created a fiberglass body and laid it over a custom made tube frame chassis. Tucked away in the tube frame is a small block Chevy motor bored out to 422 inches…and making 1,050 horsepower. This isn’t the first muscle-engine Mercedes we’ve heard of, but it is probably the quickest, and the coolest of them. There is just something inherently awesome about vertically lifting doors.

The small block puts power to the ground through a three-speed transmission and 15 inch wide tires. If this had been a real 300 SL, Winter might have been arrested. The original SL 300 put down just a shade over 200 horsepower and torque from its direct injected six cylinder engine. Instead, the car can run the quarter mile sprint in 8.1 seconds at 166 mph. And he got a chance to put his car on display at the Essen Auto Show in Germany.