[V8] W123 addiction!

[Roger Woodbury]

Well, the SLC with manual transmission was never brought to the US (to my
understanding, anyway).  I have never driven a big bodied Mercedes with
manual transmission that I would have had in the garage.  The transmission
gear spacing on the early fantail cars that did have manuals (190, 219, 220,
220s, 220se, 300on and on....) had a spaghetti shift lever and little round
knob.  The shift lever was spindly, the little round knob about the size of
a golf ball, and the whole rig was obviously made to vaguely move gears
around in a gentlemanly or gentlewomanly manner where the voyage was to be
on placid waters in a serene state of mind.  I drove quite a few of these
cars, including an extraordinarily pristine ruby red 230S that I tried to
get my father interested in. That car was a used car with 19000 miles or
something, and was pristine in every way.  My father loved the car, and had
it had an automatic he might have bought it even though it was out the other
end of his price range.  I figured that he wouldn't care about the shift
lever being for genteel use only.

I know that Mercedes has used ZF boxes in some of their more potent
performance cars, but Porsche used a Mercedes automatic in their 928s
(although with special Porsche designed gear case....).  

These cars are simply not designed or intended for guys or gals with a left
foot fetish.  Unless it's one of the really heavy metal power panzers like a
6.3 or 6.9, the cars made when Mercedes was still making "generation" cars
were not intended to compete with the likes of BMW.  The big difference is
that what Mercedes intended for its car to do, it could still be doing long
after those other cars were either crushed into sardine cans or sitting in
back of the barn waiting for someone to find that one part without which the
car could run, and which BMW not longer could source.  

Roger

-----Original Message-----
From: too many quattros [mailto:thequattroking at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 10:34 PM
To: Roger Woodbury; V8 Audi Fans
Subject: Re: [V8] W123 addiction!

me too!  but i want mine to have one of those RARE coveted manual
transmissions :p


Shayne

PARTING:
1972 mercedes benz 280 se 4.5
1986 audi 4000 cs quattro
1990 audi coupe quattro
1995 audi S6
http://spokane.craigslist.org/pts/1831227937.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/pts/1831261447.html


> From: Roger Woodbury <rmwoodbury at roadrunner.com>
> Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2010 09:44:39 -0400
> To: V8 Audi Fans <v8 at audifans.com>
> Subject: [V8] W123 addiction!
> 
> P.S.  By the way, at that wild restoration ship in Wisconsin there is an
> amazingly nice '73 450SLC 3.5 for sale for cheap dollars. That's another
one
> of those cars that I have always wanted.