Submitted by section member, Bob Hyatt:

We had been planning this trip to Germany for over a year.  Bob worked many more tennis events this year in order to save for the trip, (he is a USTA tennis official, as well as a tennis instructor, and a head tennis coach at a high school in Williamsburg).  Germany is no stranger to us.  We lived in Heidelberg in the 80s for 3 years when Bob worked as a department head for the Engineer Commander, USAEUR Hq.  While living there, we fell in love with the wonderful lifestyle Germans lead and the fine automobiles they produce.  Our first Daimler-Benz was bought at the Mannheim dealer; it was a 1985 R107 280SL.  The sales person that sold this car to us became our close friend and has been our friend ever since.  We exchange Christmas presents and from time to time his family comes to visit us and we go to visit them.  Well, they recently built a new house, so we had an excuse to visit the Kuhn’s again.

The evening flight on Lufthansa left Washington Dulles on September 15, and landed in Frankfurt on the morning of the 16th.  We planned this time of the year because it is wine harvesting time in Germany.  Many winefest take place at this time all over the country.  Oktoberfest, as so many Americans know, is also at this time, but its celebration is for beer making, and not for wine lovers.  For us wine people, there are hundreds of little known winefest taking place all over Germany.  So our plan was to partake in the many winefests as possible.  As Gale put it, “to drink and eat our way through Germany”.  Mind you we also had on our plan to visit the new Mercedes-Benz Museum and to tour the Daimler-Benz Classic Center, where I hoped to do historical research for my Euro spec 1970 280SL, and maybe even find a part or two not available here in the states.

The flight to Germany was a pleasant one. You see Lufthansa serves free wine on their flights.  So by the time Gale and I arrived in Frankfurt, we were well on our way to a mild blitz.  It was a good thing we were in a mild blitz, because after clearing German customs and meeting our longtime friends we were off on a short drive to the town of Bad Durkheim where we would be staying for the next two weeks, it hit us “Euro Shock”.  You see the Dollar to Euro was $1.44 to 1 Euro.  This wiped out 30% of our spending power.  Big shock when you pay $4.30 for a glass of wine.

Bad Durkheim is in the Pfalz area of Germany and is in the wine capital of Germany.  As we got closer to the town, as far as the eye could see were vineyards, and ah, the smell of those millions of grapes ready for harvest.

So, on our first day after our rest from the flight over, we took off to the new Mercedes-Benz Museum in Cannstatt (a suburb of Stuttgart).  Oh, how I love the autobahn.  We were in Erich’s brand new black Mercedes C200 Kompresser, 6 speed manual, with cloth seats, doing 200 km (125mph) down to Stuttgart.  You see the German spec cars are set up totally different then the US exports.  Gear ratios are different and horsepower is higher.  Anyway my friend Erich, still did not open up all the way his C class.  By the way his wife Marion, and daughter Steff, both drive new Smart cars.  One a hardtop and mom’s, a convertible.

Well, we made it to the museum in one piece, and wow what a building. It was simply a work of art.  We were there 20 years ago and it was a small museum, very plane looking, now this beautiful building.  You enter the building on the ground floor, pay for your ticket, which includes earphone tour, and proceed to the elevators up.  Inside the building is somewhat like a cross between the Guggenheim in New York City and the Hyatt Hotel in Savannah; it is open to the roof, ten floors or more, with the elevators looking like large glass bubbles.  Once you come out of the elevators your tour starts with the first original Benz motorcar, the 1886 Motorwagen.  From there you start to spiral down and around thru each exhibit chronologically from old timers to the modern day products, and then on to DB’s racing heritage.

There is so much automotive history in this museum I cannot list all of the cars on display.  There were many of the old timers, including the first “Mercedes” named car.  Do you know the history of the name Mercedes, (another story)? There was also the oldest Daimler-Benz, un-restored in existence on display.  Of course many racing cars from the silver arrow days to last years F-I McLaren MP4/23 that Lewis Hamilton drove to his World Championship last year.  See the current issue of THE STAR for the story of this cars’ placement in the museum.  One car was missing from the grid, that was the 722 car of Sir Sterling Moss, a 300SLR.  There was a sign in its place that the car was on loan to Goodwood Raceway, England for the 80th birthday bash for Moss.  (Another story, see current issue CLASSIC & SPORTS CARS).  In this car Moss, and Denis Jenkinson his navigator, won the Mille Miglia on May 1, 1955, (another story).   My favorite displays were the 300Sls; there were four of them, gullwings and cabriolets.  These are beautiful cars to see.  There was even a W113 230SL on display near them, but it not so restored.  I think my 280SL would have made for a better display, (yet another story again).

There were buses, trucks, fire engines, and taxis, you name a Mercedes and they have it on display, even some of the first AMG cars.  It was a day that will stay with Gale and I for years to come.

After our tour of this great museum, we then traveled to the DB Classic Center to meet Herr Torsten Gruninger, a Daimler-Benz Brand Communications person.  I wanted to learn more history of my European SL and he was the man that could help me.  He was to help me find some history of my SL.  This center is not far away from the Headquarters of Daimler-Benz in the town of Fellbach.  This is the shop you can send your Mercedes to have restoration done, or you can just walk in to get hard to find classic parts.  They are many classic cars on display in their large showroom area, all of which they have re-stored, and are for sale, Also there is a large garage area (twenty or so bays) working on restorations behind closed doors, that was off limits to us, and they also have a large parts store.  For sale there was a 300SL Gullwing for 500,000 Euros, several 190Sls from 250,000 Euros, two R107s for 45,000 Euros, (they now call these the new classics), 300SELs, a 200SE cabriolet, and a MB 600 Pullman limo for 1.5 million Euros.  All of these looked like the day they came out of the factory and yes, they do sell these cars, there is a waiting list of buyers.  Note, this is the shop that re-stores all of the museum cars too.  You might have read in the STAR some of the stories of the re-stored cars that they have done.  The most recent restoration was the 1912 RE 9143 Benz, the 200hp Blitzen Benz, which is now also on display at the museum.  Anyway, I did find out some information about my SL.  I got the name, and phone number of the third owner of my car (first two owners have since passed away).  Side note, I did contact him and had a conversation about the SL.  To this day he still thinks that it was the most beautiful car he had ever owned.  In fact he met his wife while she was looking at his car, and they even honeymooned in this car, (another story).

The rest of our holiday, for the most part, we put cars on the back burner and used the remainder of our days visiting towns that were located in the old East Germany, or we headed to a winefest, or a Medevilfest, or just shopping along the Hobastrass, touring castles, or hiking and biking, and yes, even picking grapes for the harvest.  Side note, most of the grape harvesting is done by machine, but there are a few wine producers that still use labor to harvest.

Our two weeks went too fast, but we were ready to get back home, and to the SL.  Think we will take it for a drive.  We look forward to our next visit back to Germany, wish it could be a permanent one.