You know, I thought my 560SL was a little rough, but this early 350SL, spotted by me yesterday in downtown San Franscisco, really raises the bar for R107 concours condition.
The Weekly Roundup is coming as soon as I get home today. In the meantime, check this out. I like it because it’s not staged. Dave, the photographer, was standing at the corner and happened to catch it. It doesn’t look fast — the stuff that looks fast is always done with a long exposure — but it was.
Appers to be a gray market model .
Nice cars , I thoroughly enjoyed flogging my 1975 350SLC European with it’s manual box , looked better but had serious rust issues .
The hyperlink photo looks like much fun .
-Nate
I believe this is a ’72 350SL (which was sold in the US). ’72’s had baby bumpers front and rear, they were imported with the US spec headlights and they had the radio antenna on the front left fender (as did the W116 sedans). I believe the antenna switched to the rear left fender in ’75 or ’76.
Lime green becomes you.
“It doesn’t look fast — the stuff that looks fast is always done with a long exposure — but it was.”
Was the spoiler up automatically? If it was, yeah, you were going really fast.
yay-uh it was
The guys from ESI said that I activated the air brake when putting on a 0-XX-0 show for the teenagers on my cousin’s block.
Even though manually activating an active spoiler when just tooling around town is pretty high on the bag-of-douche meter, in the rain on the Pacific Coast Highway at 70 mph (in someone else’s $400K car), I put it up. Tightened up the rear end noticeably.
There’s so much to love here. Decades of burned on brake dust. Roof rack with cross bars. Gray market US spec sealed beams with pretty European bumpers. Great shot.
R107s represent some of the best cars MB ever built, especially the late 560/500SLs. The early example you found is a living testament to this ethos. I love my 560SL, especially now that I have rectified many of the niggles. I am looking forward to some day trips through New Hampshire this year. I may even take it to the Greenwich Concours d’ Elegance in June.
I wish I hadn’t sold my 560SL, but I just didn’t have room to keep it safe from the winter.
That’s a shame but the reality is that cars become priorities and there are only so many that we can manage. The ones that you really care about take precedent whether or not your desires try to convince yourself otherwise. Once in a while, a fling manifests itself in my garage, but at this point in my life I can really only maintain a few pleasure vehicles in addition to my daily K20 Si.
Thankfully, all of mine are safely tucked away for the winter (not withstanding the Honda), ready for April showers to wash away the road salt and the sun to shine once more.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/firehawk2341/IMG_2677.jpg
RACIST