This was the first Mercedes-Benz fuel-injected production car and was something special in its day. Just 470 were produced and only around 48 in right-hand drive.
Where did the interest in Mercedes develop? As a schoolboy I was brought up in Preston (Melbourne) and someone in the public library made sure there was a good range of motoring books on the shelves. I found a little trove of Mercedes-Benz stuff going back to the 1930s.
In my travels and during my working life I collected quite a lot of pre-war books and magazines. It gave a depth to the interest that you don’t get from a television program. I never found out who the old librarians were, but they had excellent stuff.
Someone years later queried something and I found much of it still there.
The first Benz I had was a 190B Roundie, about 30 years ago. It belonged to a doctor in Oakleigh and was sitting under a gumtree in the back yard and he must have passed away and the family was tidying up. I think I paid $1500 for it.
Towing was another $180! It had a little bit of rust, but I was impressed that it had sat under a tree for four years and it was still solid.
Setting up a business at the time, so there wasn’t a lot of spare cash, so we really had to struggle and do a lot of it ourselves. We did favours for people to get chrome done – a bit of bartering.
I’m a fitter and turner toolmaker by trade, which is why I can do a lot of the work myself. We have a little lathe, quite a nice milling machine, which is useful when a lot of the material you needed you couldn’t buy.
I was in the Mercedes club and was President at one time. Since COVID there have been yearly gatherings of worldwide Mercedes-Benz clubs, so you meet people from Europe, Uruguay, Mexico – all sorts of places.
I would get people ringing me in the middle of the night, saying they had a Roundie and couldn’t get something they needed, would I be able to help? So I’d post things off.
Years later I was trying to get a radio for the 1952 220 Cabriolet A which shares the shed with the coupe and just couldn’t get one. A friend of mine was a marketer of cheeses and was travelling through Turkey. He rang about 2.00 o’clock in the morning (it’s always 2 o’clock!) and said I found you a radio! He was at a swap met and recognised the unit.
A lot of the bits and pieces over the years have come from talking to people from other clubs and places. Sometimes there are clubs in areas where you would never expect them – it’s a good network.
This car came about because my business partner walked in one day and said, “I’ve just bought you a car!” He was a Benz man as well, with some early models. We went over and saw it and it was in a disturbing state. There was a lot of work to do.
It had belonged to a Mercedes mechanic who had to sell it and I think I bought the dismantled rusted wreck for about $12,000.
It turned out to be better than I thought it would be and I was advised by Scott Mahoney of Metal Master Panels that all the really important solid pieces were there. He pulled the body together and it came up really well.
These old injected engines can be a blessing or a nightmare and this one turned out to be a bit of both. I worked with Reinhard Clavers who has done quite a lot of restoration work in the Mercedes group.
He worked on the engine and said, “It’s all there, mate.” We went right through it, from line-boring and working our way up. The injection is also a specialist area and Reinhard is good at that.
marque’s first fuel-injected production car engine. (Image: Guy Allen and Owner)
These days it’s very difficult get anyone to do a mechanical injection system, including a mechanical fuel pump.
It’s a 2.2lt inline six with overhead cam and aluminium head, claiming 115hp.
We got it all back together again. This was done when I was in a better position to ask people to do what I needed. But there still long hours and days when I’d be working on it to 3.00am and then go to work that morning.
The transmission was pretty good. It’s a column-shift four-speed with synchro on all four. I don’t like column changes, but it’s an excellent gearbox and surprisingly nice to drive.
The brakes are good for the period – four-wheel hydraulic power-assisted drums.
The painter I originally hoped to get wasn’t available, and a friend of mine who is into hotrods recommended Pete Denny over in Croydon. He does magnificent hotrods and was doing a 1930s classic hearse when I went to visit. He did an excellent job.
Meanwhile I’m in the background sourcing parts and doing the assembly on the car.
The interior was challenging with timber and a mix of other materials. It was in reasonable shape. Someone in the club tackled the timber, while I had someone else do the leather. The switches are a mix of material, including bakelite. Very few of this model were made, so the detail can be a challenge.
Things such as the little indicators on the front of the car weren’t available. So I had to create moulds and get them made.
For some of the stuff, there are guys in Europe with boxes of spares from mystery sources, so you might get one of something from the first person and another from the second. It was an exercise in international foraging!
It’s very nice to drive. Benzes of that era tend to have good low and midrange power. You can sneak it up to 105km/h on the highway and it’s very economical, about 30 miles to the gallon (9.5lt/100km).
We’ve driven it from Melbourne over to the Adelaide hills, up to Canberra and Sydney, up to Queensland. We’ve had a lot of pleasure out of it…