As Old As Grandma

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As Old As Grandma
As Old As Grandma

Video: As Old As Grandma

Video: As Old As Grandma
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They devour a small fortune and swallow insane amounts of gasoline. But the passion for classic cars cannot be explained with reason anyway.

By Susanne Kilimann

“Money in the bank is just not fun. A car like this, on the other hand, is a piece of joie de vivre. When Helga Schäfer talks about her piece of jewelry, her eyes light up. There is not much talk about prices in the classic scene. But you don't have to be an appraiser to estimate that the massive car - 4.70 meters long and 1.70 meters wide - has the equivalent of a normal single-family home.

Aura of extravagance

With a flawless, royal blue body from the famous Berliner sheet metal cutting shop Erdmann und Rossi, there is regularly at exhibitions - as most recently at the Villa d'Este on Lake Como: A Mercedes-Benz 680 S Cabriolet, built in 1928. A "King of the Road" above which the aura of luxury and extravagance still lies today. Like back then, in the “golden twenties”, when driving a car was still a passion of the upper ten thousand.

The Mercedes Benz 680 S made its debut in 1927. Exactly on June 19, a Sunday. Germany’s new race track, the Nürburgring, had been inaugurated the day before. With the Eifel race for motorcycles. The following day the automobiles went to the start - to test their strengths on the new, difficult course with its notorious bends, slopes and jumping hills.

New standards

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The legendary Rudolf Caracciola was the first to cross the finish line on that day, with the brand new 680 S under the bonnet of a six-cylinder with supercharging from the Daimler engine plant and setting new standards with 180 hp, 3000 rpm and 170 km / h top speed sat. It was Ferdinand Porsche who was responsible for the 680 S. Since the beginning of the year, Porsche, then still a Mercedes-Benz designer, had been working under high pressure on a vehicle that was even more powerful than the 630 K, which with its supercharged engine had already enabled a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour.

Although the 680 S with its lowered body and deep door cutouts was developed as a racing sports car, it was soon used as a normal road car. For around 30,000 Reichsmarks, car fans from all over the world ordered Type S from the German car manufacturer as "Open Tourer" or "Cabriolet". A total of 146 copies were built and delivered.

Parade of beauties

Today events such as the Concorso d'Eleganza, the parade of the world's most beautiful classics on Lake Como, are the stages on which the automotive trendsetters of yore meet again. "We were really happy when the car received the invitation to the Concorso," says Helga Schäfer, the entrepreneur from Speyer, and looks at the clock. Almost two.

The parade of vintage cars in the spacious park of Villa d'Este is due to begin in half an hour. And it goes without saying that you want to cut a good figure in front of the jury and the invited guests on such an occasion. "In fifteen minutes we start the engine and put a blanket over the hood," is Schäfer's instruction to her companion. The young man at your side is not only a tried and tested driver of the Beijing-Paris classic rally. He also takes care of the technical condition of the automobile veterans in the Technikmuseum Sinnsheim, where the royal blue 680 S Cabriolet has been located for several years.

Start with no problems

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Once again the caring was overdone. The 80-year-old supercharged engine starts without the slightest difficulty, passes the judges' grandstand without any problems, as starting number 20 in the corso of over 50 classic cars competing for the Coppa d ?? Oro, the grand prize of the Villa d ?? Este. The automotive creme de la creme has come again this time:

Rolls-Royce and Bentleys, Bugattis, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, Alfa Romeos, Aston Martins and BMW, exotics like Hispano-Suiza and Delahaye. The oldest oldie is built in 1925, the youngest from 1957. While the competition rolls back to the parking space in the park, number 20 leaves the parade and leaves the private property of Villa d'Este. "We'll treat ourselves to a jaunt by the lake," says Helga-Schäfer. The spirited oldie owner and manager of the technology museum in Sinnsheim is not afraid that the piece of jewelery could get scratches or worse in real traffic.

“There are people who only touch your car with white gloves. We don't belong to them.”Even at home, the car isn't always in a museum, she explains. “It'll be taken out and driven. After all, it's driving stuff, not stand stuff. «

In the small towns on Lake Como, Helga Schäfer's hands are in constant use. She left the steering wheel of her old Benz to her companion for this time because of a tendinitis. But direction indicators are also manual work.

Enthusiastic passers-by

And where passers-by enthusiastically wave at the old car, the classic car crew waves back at least as enthusiastically. When an elderly couple greets the vintage car and its occupants with a pensive smile from the balcony, the entrepreneur thinks of her mother. “Our grandmother often comes with us on small trips and enjoys it a lot. Grandma and the car - it's a vintage."

It has gotten cool when the sun has disappeared behind the mountains and 690 S begins the return journey. The compressor machine thunders through the short tunnels with a full sound. Driver Jörg Holzwarth is certain that the car would make it home over the Alps without any problems. The fact that the Mercedes veteran still falls for it is not due to his particular thirst. According to the technical data sheet, the average consumption of the 1.9-ton vehicle was 26 liters.

No win

How much the oldie swallows today, nobody knows exactly. The tank filling is measured with a stick. "And when the level drops below the limit, you just fill up." What makes long journeys in an old car so exhausting is classic car fans who are on the road with modern vehicles. "They overtake, cut in right in front of us, slow down to see the car better," says Jörg Holzwarth. "And with a car like that, which has a much longer braking distance, you get serious problems."

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The Mercedes Cabriolet from Sinnsheim did not win the 2008 Villa d'Este trophy. The favorite of the audience and the jury is the Mercedes-Benz 540 K Autobahnkurier from 1938, which scores not only with technical and aesthetic details, but also with its enormous rarity. Only two motorway couriers are said to exist worldwide. One of them once belonged to the Shah of Persia and is still in Tehran today. The only roadworthy 540 K belongs to Arturo Keller, America's largest Mercedes collector, and was specially made for the Concorso d ?? Eleganza sent from California to Lake Como. The people of Sinsheim also pay their respects to the black motorway courier: "Arturo deserves the win, that's for sure."

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