means either "easy" as an adverb or "light" as an adjective in German. Defining a car it has to mean "Light". It is often assumed that the letters stand for Sport Leicht. One car magazine in 2012 declared that the abbreviation "SL" - "securitized and personally signed by Rudolf Uhlenhaut" meant Super Leicht. This contradicts "Mercedes-Benz 300 SL" of Engelen / Riedner / Seufert, which was produced in close cooperation with Rudolf Uhlenhaut showing that the abbreviation meant Sport Leicht. Mercedes-Benz used both forms until 2017. It was even called Super Super. On the company website it was called Sport Leicht until 2017 and then changed to Super Leicht. For a long time it was unclear what intention the company had at the time when assigning the letter combination. It was not until the beginning of 2017 that a chance finding in the corporate archive, from the early part of 1952, clarified that at least in the case of the 300 SL the abbreviation SL stood for Super-Leicht. Technical data See also Mercedes-Benz SL-Class Mercedes-Benz Classic Center References 190SL Rear-wheel-drive vehicles Roadsters 1960s cars Cars introduced in 1955