Happy New Year.

May all your Mercedes related dreams come true this year ..........

Welcome to the latest newsletter.  In this edition we have part five of the Germany tour, the "what if" explained, and the usual line up. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks John and Sandra Green.
 

Opening hours.

Our normal opening hours are Monday to Friday 7.45am 'til 5.15pm for the workshop and 8.00am til 5.00pm for the Spare Parts department and Saturday mornings by appointment. We generally work about one in every two Saturdays but this is not done to any plan. Normally we work when there are jobs that were not completed during the week. Please call and check to see if we are open before calling in on a Saturday.

Thanks.

Germany tour part 5...

In the last Newsletter I gave everybody an abridged run down of some of the amazing selection of cars that are stored at the Classic Centre and in the adjacent storage sheds. Many of them were being, or had been, prepared for the new Mercedes-Benz museum designed by UN Studio that is currently under construction in Stuttgart at a cost of over 50 million Euros and will be opened this year.

The Museum was founded in 1923 and the existing buildings that are within the walls of the Unterturkheim plant walls had become too small to provide sufficient room for the exhibits. The new museum will cover 17.000 sq. meters of exhibition space for the historical and new collection of Mercedes-Benz products. Also included will be a museum shop, restaurant, sky lobby, kids museum and cinema. With an expected 450,000 visitors annually, the Mercedes-Benz museum will be the best-visited museum in Stuttgart. You can check out the Mercedes-Benz website page on the new museum here.

Here is an architects view of what the design looks like:

"The Museum program is accommodated in an intricate package in which the various exhibits, the public programs and the service and support programs are interwoven. Shifts in the floor levels challenge the symmetry of the trefoil plan in section. Spatially, the building is structured as a double helix. The leaves of the trefoil rotate around a triangular void, forming six horizontal plateaus which alternately occupy single and double floor heights, resulting in six double-height and six single height exhibition spaces. The organisation does not involve a continuous, single surface; the six plateaus themselves are level, with slowly sloping ramps bridging the height differences between them. The aimed effect of this organisation is to create exciting spatial constellations, enabling a wide range of look-through options, shortcuts, enclosed and open spaces, and the potential for continuity and cross-references in the various displays. The visitor proceeds through the Museum from top to bottom. "
 

In plain english this means that when you enter the Museum you get a lift to the top floor and then walk down a series of six spirals to reach the bottom. Each level will feature a different era of Mercedes-Benz history. Whilst in Stuttgart we took the time to check out the old Museum which looked much the same as the last time I visited it. To access the old museum you need to park outside the Unterturkheim plant gates and wait for a bus that takes you inside the plant to the museum. It is certainly worth a visit if you happen to be in Stuttgart before the new museum is opened.

The Classic Centre will still be in Fellbach which would best be described as an outer suburb of Stuttgart. Apart from the workshop services that I indicated in the last newsletter the Classic centre also offers the following services:

- Car sales with a focus on vehicles manufactured before 1963 including the 300 SL Gullwing as well as the models of the 300 series that former German chancellor Adenauer preferred, or the luxurious pre-war supercharger cars. For each vehicle, the Mercedes-Benz Classic Centre provides the customer an extensive first-class service package. Their specialists compile detailed reports on the engineering, specifications and condition of every car. Whilst we were there they had in their showroom the following:

- 2x 1953 Type 300 cabriolet D in mint condition
- W113 280SL that had been restored by them
- W111 220SE coupe in very original condition
- A 300SL Gullwing and a Roadster
- A W121 190SL
- An amazing Type 220 Cabriolet A

They also have a wonderful display in their showroom of a model 190SL painted in every colour that Mercedes-Benz have offered up to the 70's you can see these on display behind the 190SL below.

- Spare parts sales and quality control. The Classic Centre handles spare parts for all "Classic" models. A Classic is considered to be any model that has been out of production for over 20 years. This year the W123 became a classic as production cessed in 1985 so the parts for these are now available from the Classic Centre.  They even carry spare wheels for the 1886 Patent wagon!

A look at the very neatly stacked shelves shows a history of packaging with three different generation of packaging. First is the light blue and white squares, followed by the all mid blue boxes followed by the current design of grey boxes. It does show just how much of there stock is "old stock"

 You may have heard me say before that Mercedes-Benz don't "make" cars they "assemble" them. Well this is true most of the parts that your Mercedes-Benz are made of have been outsourced to a supplier normally in Germany but in some cases dotted all around the globe. Based on the small quantities required for some classic parts these days they are now made by specialist reproduction companies not the original manufactures. So before any part is made available for sale it is quality tested. The picture below is of a reproduction Rudge wheel for a 300SL Gullwing that failed the quality control program due to the rivets pulling out!!

Whilst the bulk of parts are outsourced some are still made "in house" and the Classic Centre holds the patterns and jigs to this. Below is a picture of the jig to make the exhaust manifolds for a 300SL Gullwing!

- Tours. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Centre is open to the public Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.. Guided tours (including workshop) take place every Monday from 14 - 15 p.m. Tours of the storage sheds are a little harder to arrange :-)
 

If you would like to take a virtual tour of the Classic centre please click here.

Later that night we decided to go for a drive around Stuttgart and wound up at the factory gates again. The gates are at the end of Mercedes Street!  There is also a pub/restaurant at the end of Mercedes St and would you believe there was a collection of Classic Mercedes-Benz's parked in the carpark.

These included a W111 220SE coupe, a W113 230SL Pagoda, an immaculate W121 190b and plenty of other interesting cars. Some quick thought decided that there must be a Mercedes-Benz club meeting in the Restaurant so in we went! Sure enough the Stuttgart branch of the Mercedes-Benz club were having their monthly restaurant night! We introduced ourselves and spent the rest of the night talking Mercedes-Benz. Interestingly, many of the members were middle level management with Mercedes-Benz and were quite happy to share their opinions on where the company and design philosophies are heading.

Next newsletter we are off to see two of the most exciting restoration workshops in Germany  H.K Engineering and Kienle Stay tuned.

Air conditioning not cold!

Is your Air Conditioning not as cold as it used to be? Don't forget that we have all the gear to regas your air conditioning system to Mercedes-Benz standards using R134a gas. Ring our service manager Chris Righton on 02 6239 1099 and mention this newsletter for a $100.00 regas (normally $125.00)

Joke of the month.

What the?

The "what the" from last month was a W116 station wagon built (or rather converted) by Crayford Engineering in the UK. The Westerham-based company Crayford called the car  "Mercedes Estate". The additional side windows and tail gate are originally from a Ford Consul/Granada station wagon. The photo was a promotional picture from Crayford used in there catalogue.  "Crayford was a  Coachbuilder who specialized in mainly conversion of UK based manufactures vehicles to station wagons and convertibles as well as conversions of Mercedes-Benz sedans into station wagons (or estates).". The price of the MB estates started at British Pounds 12,500, the conversion alone cost GBP 2,200. The German Coach builder Norddeutsche Karosseriefabrik  also did a station wagon conversion of the W116 at a cost of  DM 20.000.  The Crayford conversion was approved by Mercedes-Benz and could be ordered from your local dealership at the same time as you ordered the car.

The W116 was not Crayfords first atempt at a Mercedes wagon, there first was a rather ugly version of the W114/115 series.

There have in fact been a lot of different conversions done to create Mercedes-Benz station wagons before Mercedes-Benz them selves worked out that there was a market in the late 70's. If you click here you can see quite a few examples.

So why am I interested in these? Well, I have brought one with what may be an interesting history.  Back in 1985 when I was 21 (yes I have been hooked on Mercedes-Benz's for a long time) I took a picture of a blue W116 station wagon sitting in a caryard in Johnston St Collingwood in Melbourne. It was certainly in excellent order and the sort of car I dreamt of owning some day. Well now I own the very same car. Not long after it was in the car yard it found its way to South Australia where it has since had two owners, unfortunately the first owner didn't treat it very well and its condition has suffered some what from when the picture was taken.

Now according to the last owner there is a chance this car has a very interesting history. He researched the Crayford company and found a press realise from the 70's stating that they were going to start production in both Australia and the USA. Further investigations indicated that the blue wagon in question was the one and only car made here in Australia as a test car. Crayford were supposed to have sent out a team from the UK to a local Mercedes-Benz panel shop to show them how it was done. I will be looking into this to see if  I can confirm any of it. Meanwhile the wagon will be restored and hopefully be on display at the Easter rally here in Canberra.

So who got it right?  Well quite a few of you picked it as a converted W116 sedan, however the only one to pick it as a Crayford Station Wagon was Ken Carmichael from "Kens Classics" in Brisbane. Well done.

So lets see who can work out what this is........stay tuned.