stuttgart classic centre, and MB museum with 116s

[nathan]

gents (we did only ever have one lady member!)
spent the weekend in germany where i went to stuttgart as a prelude to the frankfurt motor show.
stopped by the classic centre and had a look around. the usual wild cars on display including a clk gtr cab! they wanted 1.5mill.
at the museum, the temporary display this month was on the s-class which was cool.  my ticket came with a nice 116 on it, and aside from the damn silver 300sd with US bumpers (not to start a war!) which is always there (why a US, why!!), they had a blue euro 6.9 in the s-class display (had odd aerial, update seat heater switches, and some 'burn' on the alloys! - but who is criticising!).  between the museum and dealer in the same building, was the rarest of them all, a white 350sel! very nice with 46000km.  they also had some sweet 1:5 (?) prototype design models i would kill for in the s class display.  and an awesome idea for a man bag, i will put my wife onto it!   then onto frankfurt motor show for the weekend which was wild and i think merits its own video. but a teaser includes the classic they put on in front of everyone in the official MB hall.
regards
nathan
ps anyone work in the postal industry, i have 10 kg of brochures i need to get home!!

this is the link for a brief 3 minute video on mainly the 116 action starting half way through
http://youtu.be/JjHNtEgZA3Q

[adamb]

Nice pics. The gold 6.9 gets around. Saw at the Goodwood Festival of Speed some years ago. I love the gold/brown velour combo. I used to own a 500SEC in exactly that combo and it reminds me of that experience.

[nathan]

thats very interesting AB. id love to know how many cars they have tucked away!

[gf]

Cool photos nathan! Hey do you know what those 2 round dials above the shifter are? never seen those before

[ZCarFan]

Since I owned two at the time of my visit, I naturally snapped a pic of the 300SD while I was there, complete with those lovely bumpers. 

Nathan, the idea behind the bumpers was to reduce insurance costs.  Prior, the bumpers on most cars were rather fragile, and would get severely damaged when bad drivers would parallel park "by feel".  This lead to continuous repair bills and insurance claims.  So, legislation was put in place to require bumpers to withstand a 5 mph impact without damage.  Seems strange to me, as if the public (who is to be represented by the state) really cared about the insurance costs, they would have simply bought cars with stouter bumpers.  The fact that they did not should be proof that it was not a real concern.  Such things confuse me, but that is an off-topic subject.


Please forgive the poor photo quality,  at the time I was blissfully ignorant of how insufficient my old camera was.