Mercedes-Benz Rolls Out The Classics
PH gets its '80s thang on' in an Astral Silver 500SL
Pre-Goodwood you might remember we had a brief go in an early Jag E-Type, so it was interesting a few days later to get our hands on a car that - for a short period at least - went head-to-head with the E-Type in the showrooms.
The Mercedes-Benz R107 (aka the SL roadster) was in production from 1971 (the E-Type was still offered up to 1974) right up until 1989, making it the firm's longest-serving road car. PH was lucky enough to drive one of the last models from Brooklands to Weybridge on the Saturday morning at the FoS.
A number of cars had been shipped over to Brooklands as part of M-B's Goodwood activity, including four original Gullwings, and we could have spent a whole day just drooling over them in the Brooklands Hotel car park.
Instead, we were chucked the keys to a 1988 500SL in Astral Silver, and spent a wonderful couple of hours running top-down to West Sussex in what used to be Merc's flagship sportscar.
So we came down to earth with a bit of a bump when we got the thing out on the road. The driving experience may not have been quite as archaic as that earlier generation E-Type, but it's certainly 'classic'. Clunky damping, woolly steering, body roll and dodgy ergonomics were still big in the '80s, and as for a 5.0 V8 engine making 240bhp - we'd be laughing at that today, right? (In case you were wondering, the car was good for 134mph when new, and 0-60mph in 7.4secs which, to be fair, doesn't compare badly with the latest 500SL's 155mph and 5.4secs when you consider a quarter of a century has passed!)
More Mercedes-Benz Museum collection classics at Brooklands:
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It think that, back in the 50s up until the mid-80s, Mercedes Benz were making some of the most oppulent machines on the planet..
Just look at those Pagodas and the 280 SE Convertible - they still look very expensive today. The Gullwings are to die for.
If you compared thier cars with the likes of, for example, BMW, Jaguar or Porsche, nothing comes close within that era - they just look so good and you know, just by seeing them today, that they were very high class motors back then.
If only today's models looked as special...... Yes, they are expensive when it comes to the high end models, but, still, they just don't seem ooze that sort of class any more.
tishly. If only they still made cars this well...There were a few nice cars in that movie, including an E30 325i Convertible!
They are an icon of the 80's and a great car to cruise around in. An old school merc that is so very solid but boy can they rust.
I have a wide and varied selection of cars and the 500SL ticks a fairly unique box......I love it
Silly Chris.....he actually drove it from Brooklands to Goodwood. In fact, it was Beverly Hills Cop that made me want one when I was a kid, I also preffered the US spec four round headlights instead of the euro square headlights.
Can I have a red one please?
I took a girlfriend for a weekend away in it. We've been married 14 years.
Simon
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