Mercedes Youngtimers

I've got one more project (the newest one, the 3rd)
He's the FatalCoupe.

Not to be immedias res, I shortly tell you the beginning, but the posts will be about the resurrection. I've felt for long-long time, that it's OK, that the w126 is the best car men ever built, but I need a v8 coupe out of it.
The MiamiWeiss I always wanted to rebuild to a factory look (Lataer i added some lorinser optics) so i could not gratify my perverse addictions like AMG widebody conversion, ballon like wheels (means maximum of 16 inches in diameter and minimum of 9-10 inches in width), biturbo conversion, and so on. I was winking towards the w126 coupes, like a centlessdreamer on the www.hasznaltauto.hu when I found this ad:

With the following text:

For Sale, because of material problems a 500 SEC mercedes in part and complete. Perfect to repair and recover an other SEC

Illness or mental problem?

When did it start? Don' know. Maybe at my age of 6-7, when I was roaming on a
procession with my parents. Yeah, I've seen the car wich started the avalanche.
A police w116. Programmes were passing, but haven't seen even one. I checked only the machine. Later I also touched it. Star, chrome, grill, star, chrome... With a cop in the window.

Eyy, fucka, go da hell away, coz it's a federal property, not tobe touched!

I left, but i already knew that something have happend to me. I couldn't look at our zsiguli as a god any more. My eyes were always seeking for the star, this time still with not so much success. Later I went to Köln for some years, and there...
w123s, 26s, 115s, and the first w124ers. Two blocks from us were the Benz dealer.

When the family went for shopping they gave me there to Mr Volker and Miss Uschi.
Land of plenty...
They were nice, they let the stupid boy to sit in the new cars. I never touched anything, I was only sittin in them for hours with a vacuous smile on my face. Then
the neighbour came home with a brand new w124. I was out of control and the old guy liked, that I'm so enthusiastic. He brought me for a ride, later I went with him also for longer trips.

I was already posing in my coupe and it was sure, that I will be buried in it.
Afeter buying it some months later I brought it to a workshop near Győr to eliminate the problems I dicovered. Fluids and filters replaced, the diff was leaking, a dent, some problems with the clutch and so on. I was naive and a twit when I tried to play the ambitious with the following words: "Dear Sanyi, It's no problem if it takes a bit longer time it only has to be perfect". Transleted to the language of the mechanic, it means: "This guy is an idiot but he is rich and I only will start work on his car when I'm already finished polishing also the nail on my small finger on my left leg.

We arrived home. Ok it has not so much information, but if I tell you that the transmission died totally when arrived, maybe you can feel something from the "holy shit" situation. But the machine ran quite good on the hungarian highways.
(don't lough on the tacho, I will adust it forward)

Maybe my father is the guilty. If he knew it before, probably he would still use the yellow 1.5 zsiguli or he buys that nice Volga station wagon wich was bought in th wery last moment before him. But it happened different way.

I lived the change of the system as a child. My remembrances are fading but I can clearly remember one thing. Daddy went for some days with his friends to germany to buy a car. I was waiting for him, dreaming of what kind of car miracle he will come home with. It was
sure, that it will be a Mercedes Benz Diesel. He was dreaming of it like lot of others. The heating oil was nearly for free, the enterprenneurs were getting rich, the wind of west touched us and a lot of money came, what we didn't know for what to spend. A new
fridge? A bigscreen color TV? A C64? Maybe a HiFI tower? Or for example an AKAI video recorder? Or a Standinglamper Benz? No! A laying lamper! The last one was a pretty cool thing to have in these times. For a nowadays teenager it has to be explained.

Not only I wrote about the light idiocy in my post but my colleagues, too. The concrete manifestation can be caught during buying the car.

I work as a businessman but for an advanced youngtimer petrolhead this fact is not really more important than the address of his grandma. So my colleague decided to sell his W124 coupé. Since I had asked him long before if he would sell it, it became obvious for him that no ad is necessary, he already found the perfect fool. Mr. Perfect Fool started to check the internet, papers, Eurotax, consults fortunetellers, etc., but all these are only alibi activities, because in 80% he is lost. He would push up the price if he could. Since he is not yet in the foaming stage of madness, he takes the car to the local autodriver´s club for a buyers test. In 90 minutes some issues are discovered and printed, one could start bargaining, just for the show. In my case the car had no major issues. This meant that it was absolutely evident that I would buy the car. Well, what could have stopped me?

I like cars since I'm my own master. These day's youngtimers are my favourites, because we are the age, we grown up together. We used them, watched them, we were longing for them, we collected them as a matchox and all our favourit cars were one of them. I still feel the same.

My affiliation to the Star brand is in connection with a german holliday. Everything began there, when I was 9.

The holliday started in East Germany, we were guests at my Mother's pen-friend in East Berlin. Then using the actual currency limit + hidden money + other jollyjokers: one week West Germany, München and the Alps.

The way was long and rough. With other words: Oily, very expensive and full of sweat.

And still, where is the end of it???

I, not like the other ones, can not plead any kind of childhood's Benz related trauma.
Because of the poorness of my family I'm socialized on zsigulis. Even my mother's "You
must got into a bad company" version is false. OK, later it has happened, but the cause and effect relationship was the opposit.

Why youngtimer? I don’t know, but it started somewhere in my childhood. I was always helping my father, when he was repairing the family car, and I loved to get dirty by oil. During the years when I was growing up, I reapaired my bike, motorcycle, and my car. Because I was a child in the 80s, my favorits were the top cars of this era, the Benz 500 and the Porsche 911. The bad guys in the movies were driving those cars, i was dreaming about, to have one. But I grown up, started to work, and changed my dreams to reliable, boring cars. Something was missing. Then my brother repaired the ’85 380SE of one of our friend, and during the testdrive, I felt, I’m lost. I sold the Astra, and the hunt season started, the target was to find a nice 126 sedan. I found the „real one” quite fast, he was a 280SE from ’82, 2 overhad cams, 6 cylinder, wonderful lapisblaumetallic color!

It was summer 1991 when we were 3rd grade high school students and decided to see Paris with my friend. Hitchhiking. From Miskolc, Hungary. Well, the project was succesful and this was the time of my first serious MB experience.

On the way back home we stood in Karlsruhe on the Autobahn and already felt very experienced which car to thumb. To be honest, we knew which were the cars that would certainly not stop. Based on that we were quite surprised when a black two-door Mercedes slowed down. The second shock came when the windows opened and the white-haired driver, appr. 70 years old asked where we wanted to go. Icy air came out of the car and this was definitely science fiction for us. He apologized because of the space in the back but I really did not care, I sat in the front. The trunk simply ate the two soviet aluminium framed bagpacks and my redneck eyes starred when somebody or something gave me the belt after closing the door.

The kind old man had some factory and I still don´t know if he had always been driving like that but we were truly shocked during the ride to Munich. With the left hand on his thigh, the right elbow on the armrest he chased the car at full throttle. The black coupe took position in the overtaking lane and if sometimes we had to brake to 100 mph because of some sleepy driver we were immediately horrified by bonnet-lifting full throttle accelerations reaching 155 mph with an evenly walking speedometer needle. Who cared at that time about the leather seats, the beautiful wooden trim… In Munich we were simply sluttering. Grown up in Trabant, Wartburg, Shiguli types, for a hungarian guy this w126 series 500 SEC was a true shock. Later I realized that my body does not raise enough antibodies against the coupe-virus which I got on this trip.

First things first: back home I bought this 1:26 diecast coupe made by bburago. At that stage it was nothing else than sheer dreaming.



Years later I kept on saying to my younger brother that one day I will have a Mercedes. The 1990´s hungarian used Mercedes market consisted mostly of the greengrocer series, badly tortured W123 types. Havnig nice memories of the W123 estate on our Paris trip I thought that this type is the ultimate one. The W126 was beyond any dreams. I had no money, of course. So my first car was a rusty Audi 80.

I had to wait until 2006 only. My colleague has won a car in the casino and unlike before he was suddenly ready to sell the W124 coupe. Bad for him - good for me. Finally I had a my ass in a blauschwarz coupe, I was pushing the star smiling like a baby with a full nappy. It had no V8 engine and was not a W126 but it was a Mercedes Coupe and mine. Last year I already passed the classical idiot´s test: I bought a W124 estate on ebay without checking before. It seems now that I was lucky. No major things, this one serves really well.

 

Fine, the experienced would say, but how far is that from a W126 coupe… hang on.     

This post will be about, how I could be so idiot to buy a car even without seeing it before. The other posts of the serial will be about  how I try to get it on it's leg.
The car looked liked this, when I've firs seen. First I asked my friend Mr.Cool, to take a closer look and I forgot the idea, because I still owned the 500SE and also the 320TE.



I was thinking a lot about it, so when the car popped up again on the market, I got crazy immediately. Thanks to local Benz idiots I received plenty of pictures and infos about it. So first time in my life I bought a car that I've never seen it before. I transferred the money and some days later I went for the car. Some dents and schratches, worn interior and a fuckin slipping clutch.
Overall it was a very impressive car.

Everything is because Tóni. Tóni was a friend of daddy and a car mechanic with a Ford Taunus (coupe), wich was a real whopper in the end of the seventies in Hungary. So everyone met at Tóni's garage,and  they repaired their cars of course together. Once a guy came to Tóni with a Benz,and I don't know if he became a customer or not, but it got around in the circle of friends, so we went for a Benz watching with dad. The car was a standing lamper and a green one. Non metallic and georgeous. Consciousness of a 7 year old is not yet perfect, but I can definiately remeber the feeling that it was something unbelieveably different, compared to the Moskvitch 412 and the new 1200er Zsiguli. Different quality, different philosophy, differnt dimension, different from everything I've ever seen before. The space inside like a half flat, the plenty of chrome plated parts, the giant grill opening together with the hood, really got under my skin.
I was schocked like when I first seen Santa Claus. But I've never disillusioned... The feeling took me and it holds me tight, so it will be hard to heal.
So it happened this way, Doctor!

The healthy guy draws to cars. Guys with some perversions like also the old cars. The aberrated ones also use them, moreover deify them. This blog is about these 20-30 years old heavy metals and about the attached pleasures and displeasures. Because everyone is Benz-bugger in the company, it's about old stared cars.