I really like that '75 Dodge Royal Monaco. It's rare enough to see a Dodge/Plymouth version of the '74-78 C-body, as they weren't popular when new, although the Newport/NYer seemed to fare pretty well. But even rarer to see a 2-door that doesn't have that awful padded landau roof treatment that does away with the clean hardtop look.
And judging from those pictures, that car looks like it's really out standing in its field. Sorry about the bad double entendre, just couldn't resist. :P
...nice blue and silver 1957 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud on Frankfored Avenue in Philadelphia. The rather seedy block on which it was seen makes it an even more unusual sighting. Wonder if it was stolen?
Facel Vega--- Mopar people would be totally clueless as to what a Facel Vega even is, who built it, or why. Not on their radar. Appeals mostly to the Euro/American hybrid crowd, who like Jensen, ISO, Monteverdi and the like.
Renault Turbo: This is a seriously competent car and would shock many unsuspecting boy racers, especially in say a hill climb, where it is perhaps nearly unbeatable by most modern cars. This car can crush cars with 3X the engines and size on a hillclimb. However, you need guts to drive it and don't expect to do so well in 0-60 street racing. All this out of a 1.4 liter engine (probably a hand grenade engine, but what the heck). There's even a 200 HP version. Serious, major fun car.
1954 Buick Skylark -- get real, seller. First of all, perhaps 150K would be all the money for a stunning 100 point restoration and what you have is a car last restored in 1992. Trolling for suckers? These aren't Mopar muscle cars, they don't go up in value every year. Still a nice looking and rare car that can bring serious money---but the price has to be real.
'61 Imperial -- price seems fair enough for a #3 car, but these are a hard sell. I'm not sure if the dreaded Virgil Exner is to blame for this design (I blame him for everything, I'm so bad...) but it's an acquired taste. Even in 1961 the car made babies jump out of their carriages, so I dunno if they will ever gain wider acceptance.
Mecedes 300S --hmmm...British restorers doing a German car---that's not a good sign...and that fat Interstate battery...this is a car that needs a very close inspection before bidding. The 300SC is the one everybody wants, as it sports the Gullwing engine.
1948 Pontiac 4-door: Hard, hard sell, to anyone, anywhere. Take $6,000 and kiss the buyer on the way out the door.
yes, that was still an Exner design, but that was AFTER the stroke, I'm sure! It was 1962 when Elwood Engle from Ford started cleaning up and "European-izing" the Imperial.
I think you can also partly blame GM for the style of the '61 Imperial too, though. It's almost like GM and Chrysler got in a contest back then to see who could outdo each other. Chrysler started to get a leg up on GM in 1955 with modern, tasteful styling, and simply embarrassed GM for 1957. Well, GM reacted to those '57 styles by rushing the '59's into production, a year ahead of schedule. And as over-styled as the '59's were, from what I've seen of some prototypes that still used the '58 body shell, well, it could have been much worse! Chrysler actually used consierable restraint in 1958, at least compared to some of GM and Ford's biggest excesses, but then they did a heavy-handed facelift of the '57-58 body for '59.
Then, for '61, it's almost like Chrysler tried to react to GM by going even more outlandish, but then GM backed down and issued much more restrained, tasteful, and in some cases slightly downsized cars.
One thing that kind of surprises me though, is the relative restraint used in the 1960 Chrysler and DeSoto. Compared to the heavy-handed, chromey '59's and the '61's with their awkward slanted headlights, the '60's almost seem like an anomaly.
For some reason, I also like the '60 Imperial the best in that timeframe. It has more heroic tailfins than the '57-59, but somehow seems more cleaned-up and handsome up front. But at least it doesn't have those awful free-standing headlights of the '61-62.
I'll admit though, I've seen '61 Imperials in person, and I think they do look cooler in real life than they do in pictures. Hardly a beauty queen, and downright strange looking compared to a '61 Lincoln or a '61 Caddy (another one of many cars I'd love to own one day), but they're just so wild looking, that it kinda makes it endearing.
Andre, you should become a writer...your opinions of the cars you like and the history you know is always interesting.
Today I saw 3 (!) 90s Land Rover Defenders...all the 2 door type, a yellow one, a green one, and one that was dark grey or black. I also saw a DB7 and what I believe was a 356A, it looked very early.
There is a Jeep pickup just like that one about a mile from my house... parks on the street... I didn't realize it was that old... I pegged it for early '70s..
Today I saw a R129 SL600....must be fun to maintain. Also a really immaculate Lincoln Mk VII followed by a very well kept looking 560SEL...it was like flashback to 1986.
the 300C is beautiful! to show you a little knowledge (german in this case), can be dangerous, i was wondering they would advertise the 'einspritz motor' on the back bumper. my first translation 'ein' = 1, 'spritz' = squirt. bragging about a single carb? :sick: later on, i figured it must mean 'fuel injected'. :surprise:
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Yeah, MB touted their newfound FI technology pretty hard.
MB model nomenclature can frustrate some people. In the old days, E = Einspritzung - fuel injection. S = Sonderklasse - deluxe. D = Diesel, of course. C = Coupe. The numerical part is usually a close approximation of engine displacement. Only uppercase model suffixes denote the level of the car, while there are some lower case letters used by enthusiasts to differentiate models. There are open doors for confusion, with many model names being used in different generations, and some cars being known by names that don't fit the pattern.
Examples - 220b = lowline fintail 220, the b is just used by MB people to differentiate it from a 220 ponton.
A 220SE can be a ponton or a fintail, a sedan, coupe, or convertible.
A 220 can be a ponton or a fintail or a /8.
A 300SE could be a highline W112 fintail or a lower line W126.
A 190D could be a fintail or a W201.
It goes on and on. Because of this, most enthusiasts refer to MB with their platform ("W" or "R") designations. Examples - 6 cyl fintail = W111. 80s S-class = W126. 70s-80s lower and midrange cars (240D/300D etc) = W123. These numbers did not always evolve in a heirarchy, for example the W111 was replaced by the W108. But most of the time since the 70s there has been some logic - the W202 replaced the W201, the W124 replaced the W123.
In 1994 it all changed when MB went to a strict tiered (C, E, S, SL, etc) system, and some confusion ended. The platform designations are still the same. But, I think some character was lost with the model names.
in Southern Maryland, I saw a '69 Impala 4-door hardop, in light green, sitting in a parking lot. It had been hit on the driver's side front fender pretty hard.
A few miles away, at a repair shop, I saw a '69 Camaro hardtop, in medium metallic blue, that had been hit pretty hard on the passenger side fender! Enough to shift the whole car a bit, ahead of the cowl. I thought it was kinda funny seeing two '69 Chevies with damage like that so close together...wonder if they hit each other! :surprise:
Also, passing a little used car lot, I saw a nice looking (from passing by at 60-70 mph at least) turquoise '67-68 Caddy convertible. "$6800" was written on the windshield. I might have to go back down there sometime to check it out.
Oh, and in DC last nite, in a lot behing a chain link fence I saw what I think was a '65 Rambler Classic. Might've been a '66. It was a 4-door sedan, horizontal quad headlights, and kinda nondescript looking. Like if you took a bunch of people and put them in a room and told them to draw a picture of a generic mid-60's car, that's what most of them would come up with.
there isn't going to be a pop quiz on this is there? your history lesson just brought back a memory for me. my dad was in germany in the early 50's and i remember some pictures of him with a big prewar mercedes. maybe he used it to lure in my mom, she's german. i'll have to ask her dig out the old picture albums.
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Well Mercedes had a right to tout their FI technology. In 1955, it was highly perfected and reliable when all other companies were either still stuck on carbs or struggling to get an FI system to work using vacuum tubes or systems that worked best at WOT racing, not in everyday life.
Benz's injection was superb for 1955, and really nobody came close to matching it until 1968 or so--and that was a Bosch electronic system from lowly VW.
I'm sure the 300SL Gullwing looked like a car from outer space to most people---it was a shocking technological leap that we today can't really appreciate. It seems commonplace to us now, technically---injection, tubular frame, aluminum body panels, disk brakes (later Gulls) radial tires and 140+ mph performance out of the box.
I won't disagree with that. MB was decades ahead of the pack at that time.
This is my favorite old MB FI related promo item
Sports car performance...yeah
I once had a copy of a 1961 cover of 'Mechanix Illustrated' with Tom Cahill testing a then-new 300SE - the cover had the car jumping a sand dune or something to that effect. The caption was "Tomorrow's Car Today".
I think even a highline fintail was like a car from outer space, at least until the fins made it look old before its time. FI, 4 speed auto, 4 wheel independent suspension or even air suspension, disc brakes, all the safety gear, etc...in a sedan. The competition history of these cars speaks for itself.
Even when cars like the 124 and 126 came out, they were light years ahead of the competition.
Yeah the only problem was that the Gullwing flaunted its technology and the fintail did everything it could to hide it from the public. I think Benz didn't understand the American market...obviously not if they decided to sell their cars through Studebaker!
Benz was considered by most Americans to be a very high quality and but stodgy car, (compare and contrast to a '61 Cadillac!) until maybe around 1968 or so---that was a radical change of direction for Benz I think. It's no accident that some of the most highly prized postwar Benzes today are in the 1968-1971 bracket and that it drops off from there.
They did seem to have a Studebaker-style philosophy when it came to styling changes (make it last as long as possible), although MB seems to have been this way since before the war. They didn't get away from the prewar-looking stuff til 54, the boat-ponton style might have looked OK in 1954 but it was certainly obsolete when the fintail came out in 59, fins were then a declining fad so the fintail styling went stale in 62-63 (although it lived til 68 for lowline cars).
The way I see it, in the late 60s a couple things happened...MB finally went V8, as although the inline 6 cars were excellent, they were clattery and unfit for American driving styles. And the styling of the 108/109 and beyond has been fairly timeless, the cars didn't look ancient 3 years after they were the latest thing. MB stopped following fads and just styled their cars conservatively but cleanly. Just about everything since that time has aged extremely well. There have been blunders, but IMO there have been a lot more successes.
Mercedes used Studebaker dealerships to help give them more of a nationwide network. I'm not sure what years Benzes were sold through Studebaker dealers, but I've heard that one reason that Studebakers started going for those upright grilles in the early 60's were to give them a family resemblance to the Benz, and help the Benz become more accepted.
Remember, WWII was fresh in people's memories at this time, and they were suspicious of anything German. Restyling the Studebakers to give them a slight resemblance helped to "Americanize" the Benz in people's minds, even if the reality was that the Stude was aping the Benz.
Heck, back then even Chevy took a gamble with the badging of the Impala Supersport. Their marketing department was a bit leery of having those "SS" badges on the cars.
Mercedes really didn't make it big in the United States until that little event that gave all the imports a foot in the door...the 1973-74 fuel crunch. Prior to that, Americans wanted their luxury cars to be big and posh. Most buyers back then would have thought of a Mercedes as an overpriced Dodge Dart or Chevy Nova. And while a Benz would have offered much more than a domestic compact, the buying public for the most part simply didn't care. Until gasoline suddenly became expensive and scarce, at least.
So as it was, the Studebaker deal probably did give Mercedes the stepping stone they needed to grow their market in the United States. I'm sure that GM, Ford, or Chrysler wouldn't have been willing to pair up with them back then!
I think the Studebaker-MB association ended in 63.
I think another factor that helped MB make it in NA was the Hollywood association. The Hollywood set discovered MB in the 50s, and I think their choices helped make it trendy. You'd see the cars in movies and see stars driving them. Seems things took off pretty well after Janis Joplin's song, too...
The 300SC was a beautiful car and a good performer too. I'm sure some of the celebs had one. Rarity also helped. There were only 49 300SC cabriolets made, so that really appealed to Hollywood exclusivity.
was the one that they used in "North By Northwest"? It was a large-ish convertible that they put Cary Grant in after forcing a couple bottles of bourbon down his throat, and then they tried to send him over the "cliffs of Long Island" (of which there are none, AFAIK)
imcdb.org is an excellent site. It's French, so a lot of the movies are unknown here, and sometimes they are way off on their American car guesses - but these usually get corrected. Excellent screen caps though, the CHiPs ones are very amusing
Also a rare car but not nearly as rare as a 300SC. There were (roughly) 1,950 200SE cabs and coupes made. The 220S model was more plentiful and is consequently less valuable today.
where did the time go?! I think I just blew an hour and a half of my life on that car site! Thanks Fintail; I now have another site on which to play when I'm bored at work! :shades:
Yeah, that's an addictive site, I've killed many an hour there myself while "working". I've even posted a couple corrections, but I am usually too lazy. Makes me want to create some images for it.
love that site. CHiPs was my favorite show "back in the day". I love to catch it on re-runs where ever I can. The cars you can spot on the show are great. Ton's of 60's and 70's iron and some cool shots of imports for the period.
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is "The Rockford Files". Just about every episode was filmed out on the streets of LA, the suburbs, and surrounding area. I think that show first came out in 1974, so especially in the early episodes you'd see tons of old cars around.
Continuity could be kinda bad sometimes, though. I was watching an episode yesterday where a bad guy in a '75 Impala coupe was tailing Jim. He got fed up, slammed on the brakes, threw it into reverse, and rammed the guy. Only right at the impact, the '75 Impala turned into a '74.
Okay, okay, I know...most people wouldn't notice something like that! I think the main reason I did was because I always liked the style of the '75 Impala, which had an expensive looking upright grille, but I just didn't care for the '74 as much, which seemed cheaper with its more horizontal grille.
"CHiPs" was more fun overall though, because of all the car crashes! Although nowadays I'll watch it and get miffed if some cool old car that I like gets trashed! :P
....I saw a fun episode of 'Green Hornet', in which our hero (in civilian dress) was tooling around in a '66 Chrysler New Yorker or possibly 300 convertible. He's visiting a custom car shop, and sitting there is a custom orange '66 Buick Riviera with a power sunroof (which I don't think was factory available), some chopped thing or other and the de rigeur Ford t-bucket roadster. In the background was a '66 full-sized Ford wagon.
...Ford wagons, I saw a '67 Country Sedan or Ranch Wagon the other day, in pretty good shape, with a 'For Sale' sign on it. Haven't seen one of those in a while, but with $3 gas, I can't imagine I'll see too many as daily drivers!
Today I spotted a perfect looking red Karmann-Ghia convertible, being towed by a huge gaudy behemoth of a motorhome. It was being towed with all 4 wheels on the ground, which seemed unusual.
It was being towed with all 4 wheels on the ground, which seemed unusual.
I think you can do that with manual transmission cars, regardless of whether it's FWD or RWD, and also with FWD automatic tranny cars. The problem is with RWD cars with an automatic transmission.
I think it has something to do with the way an automatic transmission slips, which is why you can stay in gear while stopped at a traffic light without it stalling out. By the same token, if the rear wheels are on the ground, they're going to turn the differential, which will turn the driveshaft, which will turn the transmission, even when you put it in neutral. However, the transmission pump doesn't work unless the engine is actually on, so the internals of the tranny are turning without lube, and grinding themselves up.
At least, that's my understanding of it. I don't know what it is about FWD automatic cars that allows them to be towed with the drive wheels on the ground, though.
It depends *entirely* on the internal design of the transmission, manual or automatic, and what gets lubricated and what doesn't when the input shaft isn't turning. Flat-towing an NP435 (4-speed truck manual) will trash it in short order.
...towed his VW Beetle with a dolly from U-Haul. After placing the front wheels on the dolly, he placed the tranny indicator in drive. By the time he arrived at his destination the internal components of his transmission became a thick sludge consisting of metal mush and oil.
Today I spotted what I believe was a 59 Chrysler 300, it was identical to this (even in color) , at least from a distance. It was in the fast lane of I90 and moving along with traffic at maybe 70-75.
Actually there are cliffs on the North Shore of Long Island, the scene in N X NW takes place near a village called Sea Cliff which is across Hempstead Harbor from the town I went to HS in which has plenty of cliffs.
I remember the car in that movie being an Aston- Martin DB-2 or a Sunbeam-Talbot.
The Desperate Hours, a film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredrick March was recently released in DVD. I caught it last night. Most of the cars shown are fairly prosaic-- e.g. a '50/'51 Dodge or Plymouth Business coupe, and a '53 or '54 Dodge sedan but one stands out and it gets a lot of screen time. the character played by Gig Young drives a '55 Nash Healey.
Comments
Ebay time:
I wonder if Mopar people accept these in any way
Someone saved it for some reason
If you like that basic shape, go this way
Always liked these...should keep a mechanic busy
Priciest one of these I remember
Now this is a Buick...seems a little dear
Sure beats modern limos
These are odd...reminds me of a supersized X-body notchback
I could see Andre in this
Or this
For the pimp who has fallen on hard times
So bizarre
Nice survivor battleship
Really pretty, but why aren't the little details sorted?
For colder days
Nice, but a guaranteed loss
Seeing neglected fintails in my color is always unnerving
My dad would be all over this
And why did the seller of the LeCar have people pose with the vehicle in some pictures? I don't think I've ever seen people in eBay car listings.
And judging from those pictures, that car looks like it's really out standing in its field. Sorry about the bad double entendre, just couldn't resist. :P
Renault Turbo: This is a seriously competent car and would shock many unsuspecting boy racers, especially in say a hill climb, where it is perhaps nearly unbeatable by most modern cars. This car can crush cars with 3X the engines and size on a hillclimb. However, you need guts to drive it and don't expect to do so well in 0-60 street racing. All this out of a 1.4 liter engine (probably a hand grenade engine, but what the heck). There's even a 200 HP version. Serious, major fun car.
1954 Buick Skylark -- get real, seller. First of all, perhaps 150K would be all the money for a stunning 100 point restoration and what you have is a car last restored in 1992. Trolling for suckers? These aren't Mopar muscle cars, they don't go up in value every year. Still a nice looking and rare car that can bring serious money---but the price has to be real.
'61 Imperial -- price seems fair enough for a #3 car, but these are a hard sell. I'm not sure if the dreaded Virgil Exner is to blame for this design (I blame him for everything, I'm so bad...) but it's an acquired taste. Even in 1961 the car made babies jump out of their carriages, so I dunno if they will ever gain wider acceptance.
Mecedes 300S --hmmm...British restorers doing a German car---that's not a good sign...and that fat Interstate battery...this is a car that needs a very close inspection before bidding. The 300SC is the one everybody wants, as it sports the Gullwing engine.
1948 Pontiac 4-door: Hard, hard sell, to anyone, anywhere. Take $6,000 and kiss the buyer on the way out the door.
I think you can also partly blame GM for the style of the '61 Imperial too, though. It's almost like GM and Chrysler got in a contest back then to see who could outdo each other. Chrysler started to get a leg up on GM in 1955 with modern, tasteful styling, and simply embarrassed GM for 1957. Well, GM reacted to those '57 styles by rushing the '59's into production, a year ahead of schedule. And as over-styled as the '59's were, from what I've seen of some prototypes that still used the '58 body shell, well, it could have been much worse! Chrysler actually used consierable restraint in 1958, at least compared to some of GM and Ford's biggest excesses, but then they did a heavy-handed facelift of the '57-58 body for '59.
Then, for '61, it's almost like Chrysler tried to react to GM by going even more outlandish, but then GM backed down and issued much more restrained, tasteful, and in some cases slightly downsized cars.
One thing that kind of surprises me though, is the relative restraint used in the 1960 Chrysler and DeSoto. Compared to the heavy-handed, chromey '59's and the '61's with their awkward slanted headlights, the '60's almost seem like an anomaly.
For some reason, I also like the '60 Imperial the best in that timeframe. It has more heroic tailfins than the '57-59, but somehow seems more cleaned-up and handsome up front. But at least it doesn't have those awful free-standing headlights of the '61-62.
I'll admit though, I've seen '61 Imperials in person, and I think they do look cooler in real life than they do in pictures. Hardly a beauty queen, and downright strange looking compared to a '61 Lincoln or a '61 Caddy (another one of many cars I'd love to own one day), but they're just so wild looking, that it kinda makes it endearing.
Today I saw 3 (!) 90s Land Rover Defenders...all the 2 door type, a yellow one, a green one, and one that was dark grey or black. I also saw a DB7 and what I believe was a 356A, it looked very early.
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-Morgan Plus 4 roadster ca. mid-60s. This one had nice ivory bodywork and a slightly ratty black interior with a burlwood dash.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
to show you a little knowledge (german in this case), can be dangerous, i was wondering they would advertise the 'einspritz motor' on the back bumper.
my first translation 'ein' = 1, 'spritz' = squirt.
bragging about a single carb? :sick:
later on, i figured it must mean 'fuel injected'. :surprise:
MB model nomenclature can frustrate some people. In the old days, E = Einspritzung - fuel injection. S = Sonderklasse - deluxe. D = Diesel, of course. C = Coupe. The numerical part is usually a close approximation of engine displacement. Only uppercase model suffixes denote the level of the car, while there are some lower case letters used by enthusiasts to differentiate models. There are open doors for confusion, with many model names being used in different generations, and some cars being known by names that don't fit the pattern.
Examples - 220b = lowline fintail 220, the b is just used by MB people to differentiate it from a 220 ponton.
A 220SE can be a ponton or a fintail, a sedan, coupe, or convertible.
A 220 can be a ponton or a fintail or a /8.
A 300SE could be a highline W112 fintail or a lower line W126.
A 190D could be a fintail or a W201.
It goes on and on. Because of this, most enthusiasts refer to MB with their platform ("W" or "R") designations. Examples - 6 cyl fintail = W111. 80s S-class = W126. 70s-80s lower and midrange cars (240D/300D etc) = W123. These numbers did not always evolve in a heirarchy, for example the W111 was replaced by the W108. But most of the time since the 70s there has been some logic - the W202 replaced the W201, the W124 replaced the W123.
In 1994 it all changed when MB went to a strict tiered (C, E, S, SL, etc) system, and some confusion ended. The platform designations are still the same. But, I think some character was lost with the model names.
A few miles away, at a repair shop, I saw a '69 Camaro hardtop, in medium metallic blue, that had been hit pretty hard on the passenger side fender! Enough to shift the whole car a bit, ahead of the cowl. I thought it was kinda funny seeing two '69 Chevies with damage like that so close together...wonder if they hit each other! :surprise:
Also, passing a little used car lot, I saw a nice looking (from passing by at 60-70 mph at least) turquoise '67-68 Caddy convertible. "$6800" was written on the windshield. I might have to go back down there sometime to check it out.
Oh, and in DC last nite, in a lot behing a chain link fence I saw what I think was a '65 Rambler Classic. Might've been a '66. It was a 4-door sedan, horizontal quad headlights, and kinda nondescript looking. Like if you took a bunch of people and put them in a room and told them to draw a picture of a generic mid-60's car, that's what most of them would come up with.
your history lesson just brought back a memory for me.
my dad was in germany in the early 50's and i remember some pictures of him with a big prewar mercedes.
maybe he used it to lure in my mom, she's german.
i'll have to ask her dig out the old picture albums.
Scan that pic if you get a chance, sounds interesting
Benz's injection was superb for 1955, and really nobody came close to matching it until 1968 or so--and that was a Bosch electronic system from lowly VW.
I'm sure the 300SL Gullwing looked like a car from outer space to most people---it was a shocking technological leap that we today can't really appreciate. It seems commonplace to us now, technically---injection, tubular frame, aluminum body panels, disk brakes (later Gulls) radial tires and 140+ mph performance out of the box.
This is my favorite old MB FI related promo item
Sports car performance...yeah
I once had a copy of a 1961 cover of 'Mechanix Illustrated' with Tom Cahill testing a then-new 300SE - the cover had the car jumping a sand dune or something to that effect. The caption was "Tomorrow's Car Today".
I think even a highline fintail was like a car from outer space, at least until the fins made it look old before its time. FI, 4 speed auto, 4 wheel independent suspension or even air suspension, disc brakes, all the safety gear, etc...in a sedan. The competition history of these cars speaks for itself.
Even when cars like the 124 and 126 came out, they were light years ahead of the competition.
Benz was considered by most Americans to be a very high quality and but stodgy car, (compare and contrast to a '61 Cadillac!) until maybe around 1968 or so---that was a radical change of direction for Benz I think. It's no accident that some of the most highly prized postwar Benzes today are in the 1968-1971 bracket and that it drops off from there.
Really? I didn't know they sold cars through Studebaker. What was the reasoning behind that?
The way I see it, in the late 60s a couple things happened...MB finally went V8, as although the inline 6 cars were excellent, they were clattery and unfit for American driving styles. And the styling of the 108/109 and beyond has been fairly timeless, the cars didn't look ancient 3 years after they were the latest thing. MB stopped following fads and just styled their cars conservatively but cleanly. Just about everything since that time has aged extremely well. There have been blunders, but IMO there have been a lot more successes.
It was, as you can imagine, a bad idea, but it did get the cars into showrooms at least.
Remember, WWII was fresh in people's memories at this time, and they were suspicious of anything German. Restyling the Studebakers to give them a slight resemblance helped to "Americanize" the Benz in people's minds, even if the reality was that the Stude was aping the Benz.
Heck, back then even Chevy took a gamble with the badging of the Impala Supersport. Their marketing department was a bit leery of having those "SS" badges on the cars.
Mercedes really didn't make it big in the United States until that little event that gave all the imports a foot in the door...the 1973-74 fuel crunch. Prior to that, Americans wanted their luxury cars to be big and posh. Most buyers back then would have thought of a Mercedes as an overpriced Dodge Dart or Chevy Nova. And while a Benz would have offered much more than a domestic compact, the buying public for the most part simply didn't care. Until gasoline suddenly became expensive and scarce, at least.
So as it was, the Studebaker deal probably did give Mercedes the stepping stone they needed to grow their market in the United States. I'm sure that GM, Ford, or Chrysler wouldn't have been willing to pair up with them back then!
I think another factor that helped MB make it in NA was the Hollywood association. The Hollywood set discovered MB in the 50s, and I think their choices helped make it trendy. You'd see the cars in movies and see stars driving them. Seems things took off pretty well after Janis Joplin's song, too...
imcdb.org is an excellent site. It's French, so a lot of the movies are unknown here, and sometimes they are way off on their American car guesses - but these usually get corrected. Excellent screen caps though, the CHiPs ones are very amusing
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Continuity could be kinda bad sometimes, though. I was watching an episode yesterday where a bad guy in a '75 Impala coupe was tailing Jim. He got fed up, slammed on the brakes, threw it into reverse, and rammed the guy. Only right at the impact, the '75 Impala turned into a '74.
Okay, okay, I know...most people wouldn't notice something like that! I think the main reason I did was because I always liked the style of the '75 Impala, which had an expensive looking upright grille, but I just didn't care for the '74 as much, which seemed cheaper with its more horizontal grille.
"CHiPs" was more fun overall though, because of all the car crashes! Although nowadays I'll watch it and get miffed if some cool old car that I like gets trashed! :P
I think you can do that with manual transmission cars, regardless of whether it's FWD or RWD, and also with FWD automatic tranny cars. The problem is with RWD cars with an automatic transmission.
I think it has something to do with the way an automatic transmission slips, which is why you can stay in gear while stopped at a traffic light without it stalling out. By the same token, if the rear wheels are on the ground, they're going to turn the differential, which will turn the driveshaft, which will turn the transmission, even when you put it in neutral. However, the transmission pump doesn't work unless the engine is actually on, so the internals of the tranny are turning without lube, and grinding themselves up.
At least, that's my understanding of it. I don't know what it is about FWD automatic cars that allows them to be towed with the drive wheels on the ground, though.
I also saw a lovely burgundy W113 280SL.
I remember the car in that movie being an Aston-
Martin DB-2 or a Sunbeam-Talbot.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93