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Few would argue with the statement that Mercedes-Benz has built some of the most beautiful cars in the world. Many American and European cars built in the mid-1930s were extremely well designed, but among the best would be Mercedes. Many of the World War II movies show the luxurious Mercedes-Benz 770 model, made from 1930 to 1943, chauffeuring Hitler and high-ranking Nazi officers like Goering and Himmler in their spiffy uniforms. According to the Daimler website, by 1944, almost half of their 63,610 employees were prisoners of war, concentration camp detainees or civilian forced laborers.
Mercedes history goes way back to 1886 and the invention of the internal combustion engine. Some familiar names included in that history are Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and one you may not have heard of, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat and very successful race car driver named Mercedes Jellinek. All the men started separately but ended up working together and forming Daimler-Benz AG by 1924.
Walnut Creek resident Mark Rubenstein is not a car nut. He is a practicing pediatrician who happens to appreciate the beautiful styling of mid-1930s Mercedes-Benz cars. But these cars tend to be somewhat on the pricey side, easily into the seven-figure category. If one is just looking for a nice open roadster to buzz around town in on sunny days, maybe spending more than a million bucks is not a great idea. One solution — a kit car. According to Wikipedia, a kit car is an automobile that is available as a set of parts a manufacturer sells and a buyer then assembles into a functioning car.
It may surprise you, but some people don’t want to assemble a car, so in 1990, there were places like Classic Roadsters in Fargo, North Dakota, that assembled kit cars. Rubenstein bought the car used in 2000, paying $18,000.
“This is a Baron, a copy of a 1934 Mercedes Baron. It was in Quebec, and I contacted a place … in Florida (to handle the sale),” Rubenstein said. “This used car dealer was not very honest. He told me the car had a catalytic converter and a radio/CD player built into the dash. When the car arrived, there was no radio/CD, so I called him up.”
The dealer ended up sending $100, not nearly enough to cover the cost of the missing radio/CD. “The next thing that happened is that I took it down to a friend of mine to have it checked over and he told me there is no catalytic converter,” said Rubenstein (it’s hard to believe there would be a dishonest used car dealer in Florida).
Rubenstein called the Florida DMV and Better Business Bureau, which forced the dealer to send $900 to compensate for the car’s missing catalytic converter. “That didn’t nearly cover what I had to put into it. To get it to pass smog rules in California, I had to go to a referee, and he gave me a whole list of things that had to be done, costing $5,000. I finally got it to pass the smog test. Then about two or three years later, California changed their rules so the car could be licensed the way it looks rather than the engine in the car. The engine is a 1979 Mustang 302 V8, but I don’t have to smog it at all. So, I took all that stuff off and now it goes like a bat out of hell.”
Currently when Rubenstein registers this car with DMV, the make is listed as SCV, Specially Constructed Vehicle, and that exempts this car from all smog requirements. The owner prefers to drive the car on backroads in the area. “It’s not a whole lot of fun on a freeway, although it has plenty of power, so that’s not an issue, but it rattles and it’s not a luxury car by any means,” he said.
Rubenstein estimates that he drives this roadster about 2,000 miles a year. This classic replica has most of the creature comforts of cars of that era, like power steering and brakes, automatic transmission and now the radio/CD player. It has a removable convertible top that Rubenstein has stored in his garage, as he drives it only in good weather. The body is fiberglass, making it very lightweight. The odometer shows 22,000 miles, but without knowing the history of the car plus his experience with the dealer in Florida, he is uncertain of the actual mileage. Rubenstein has no plans to sell this car and probably never will. He doesn’t know the current market value of his car but stated he wouldn’t sell it for less than $25,000. Since cold weather is here now, Rubenstein will let his classic replica hibernate and wait for warm weather to return.
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, search for “David Krumboltz” at www.mercurynews.com.