Old School Cool: Isdera Imperator 108i

You may have heard of the Isdera Commendatore 112i from Need for Speed II, but have you heard of the Isdera Imperator 108i? We’ll forgive you if you haven’t; only 30 were built from 1984 to 1993. The Isdera brand hails from Eberhard Schulz, a former Mercedes-Benz design engineer who created Isdera in the 1960s. In 1978 Schulz’s firm produced the Mercedes-Benz CW 311 concept. When Mercedes scrapped plans for a production version, they let Schulz build the car as an Isdera.

This Mercedes-inspired supercar has a 6.0L AMG V8. Let the 420 horsepower run amok, and you get fantastic powerslides like the one pictured above.

We wonder how many of these cars would have been built had Mercedes-Benz decided to follow through with the CW 311 concept. Would it have been more than 30?  Can someone please start building replicas of these, so we can enjoy more of this fascinating moment in Mercedes-Benz history?

via [Marchettino]