Isdera Commendatore 112i
There can be Only One!
By 1993, the world of motoring had largely forgotten the spirit of the racing barons, those men who, like knights of old, built their machines not to suit markets or please committees, but to honor speed, precision, and mechanistic beauty. In a modest facility in Leonberg, a single car emerged that sought to revive that spirit: the Isdera Commendatore 112i. Named in tribute to Enzo Ferrari—who bore the title Commendatore as a Knight Commander—it was less a vehicle and more an act of defiance.
It was also a requiem.
Origins Forged in Obsession
The story begins long before the 112i’s dramatic unveiling at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1993. It starts in 1971, when a young Eberhard Schulz, armed with little more than stubborn ambition and a home-built sports car called the Erator GTE, presented himself to the gates of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. His engineering credentials were negligible; his balls, giant. Eventually, Porsche relented—not because of his résumé, but because of the Erator itself. It was "a declaration of ability wrought in steel and fiberglass."
Working in Porsche’s design department, Schulz continued to sketch his dreams after hours. One such dream—the CW311—was envisioned as a spiritual successor to the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. With the support of tuning house B+B, a prototype was unveiled at the 1978 Frankfurt Motor Show, cheekily brandishing a Mercedes star on its snout, to which Mercedes turned a blind eye. After parting ways with B+B, Schulz founded his own shop in 1982—Isdera, short for Ingenieurbüro für Styling, DEsign und RAcing—with the goal of bringing the CW311 to life.
The resulting machine was the Imperator 108i, a low-volume, hand-built supercar powered by a Mercedes M117 5.0-litre V8. It was impressive for its time, boasting gullwing doors and an aerodynamic silhouette. But Schulz was not yet finished.
The world, however, was almost finished with him.
Birth of a Thoroughbred
In 1989, as the Imperator’s production was drawing to a close, Schulz began sketching a successor. By 1993, it emerged in the form of the Commendatore 112i—a machine he hoped would race at Le Mans, conquer autobahns, and shame Italy’s finest. At first glance, the 112i appeared otherworldly: a low, elongated shape with dramatic gullwing doors, matching engine cover, and the striking omission of traditional side mirrors. In their place sat a periscope—yes, a periscope—borrowed from its predecessor. Function followed form; Schulz had wind tunnel data to prove it.
Under its handcrafted fiberglass skin lay a Mercedes-Benz M120 6.0-litre V12, a twin-cam, all-aluminum jewel that, in other applications, powered dignified saloons and svelte supercars like the SL600 and Pagani Zonda. Yet Mercedes had never intended it for a manual gearbox. That didn’t deter Schulz. He commissioned a custom flywheel and bolted it to a modified 6-speed transaxle derived from a 5-speed unit by Ruf, Porsche’s “mad cousin”. The gearbox itself was a delicate fusion of ingenuity and desperation, its sixth gear added to help the car reach its target top speed of 340 km/h (211 mph).
The Commendatore’s chassis was a spaceframe construction, as serious as racing regulations would demand. The suspension was sourced from the Porsche 928 but heavily modified, with active height control developed with Bilstein and BBS. At speed, the car would hunker down by 76mm, slicing through the air with purpose. Its drag coefficient, verified in Mercedes-Benz’s wind tunnel, stood at Cd 0.306—a remarkable figure for the time and testimony to Schulz’s monastic devotion to aerodynamic cleanliness.
Despite its racing ambitions, the Commendatore was never merely a racer. It was a grand tourer in disguise, boasting a 120-litre fuel tank, an actively managed chassis, and even an electronically controlled airbrake that would rise vertically under deceleration like a mechanized parachute. It had no less drama than a McLaren F1, but more Germanic restraint.
Inside, the cabin was two-tone black and blue, upholstered in leather and fitted with RECARO sports seats. Mercedes gauges and switchgear provided familiarity, although the speedometer reaching 400 km/h hinted at untapped fury. The door sills, absurdly wide, housed dual fuel tanks—a decision born of both necessity and lunacy.
Collapse and Resurrection
Isdera’s plans for limited production—each car taking six months to handcraft—were ambitious but sincere. A second model was even promised, with a 6.9-litre V12 producing 548 bhp, according to Autocar. But the early 1990s proved unkind to idealists. The Japanese economic bubble burst in 1993, vaporizing Isdera’s primary investors and pushing the company into bankruptcy. The Commendatore, its creator’s magnum opus, remained a non-functional prototype.
Enter salvation: a Swiss consortium acquired Isdera’s remains and rescued the 112i, bringing it back to the 1999 Frankfurt show under a new moniker—the Silver Arrow. The periscope mirror was replaced with CLK GTR-style side mirrors, the BBS racing wheels swapped for more conventional five-spoke alloys. Purists frowned. Videogame fans, however, rejoiced: the car appeared in Need for Speed II, forever immortalizing it in pixelated glory.
Years later, Isdera re-acquired the original Commendatore and painstakingly restored it to 1993 specification. The process involved commissioning new BBS wheels, restoring the original Arctic Silver paint, and reinstalling the periscope mirror. Now wearing fewer than 10,500 kilometers, it is registered for road use in Germany—a unicorn not confined to museums but meant to roam.
A Second Shadow
Curiously, whispers tell of a second 112i. According to factory insiders, a spare subframe and the original moulds were sold to a private enthusiast. Over six years, with sporadic involvement from Schulz, the second car took shape—finished in Light Ivory with a light grey interior. It features side-exit exhausts, Porsche-sourced switchgear, and minor aesthetic changes that would later prompt Isdera to disown the car. It exists, but like a bastard heir, it remains outside the company’s official canon.
The Last Romantic
The Isdera Commendatore 112i stands today as a monument to what might have been—a one-off machine sculpted by a man whose ambition routinely outpaced his resources. It belongs in the rarefied air of 1990s boutique hypercars like the Koenigsegg CC8S or Pagani Zonda C12, but with none of their commercial backing or mass production. Unlike them, it was never about finding buyers. It was about proving something.
To drive the Commendatore is to commune with Schulz’s ideals: purity of purpose, reverence for mechanical craft, and a romanticism that borders on madness. It is not a car made by committee. It is not a car that bends to convention. It is, instead, a knight’s charge into a world no longer chivalrous.
And like all good myths, there was only ever one.
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