12 Cars Apart

Our customer Rick recently purchased his 1971 Mercedes Benz 300 SEL 6.3 and booked it in for some air suspension work.  Surprisingly and totally unexpected, Theo noticed by the chassis numbers that these two cars were on the same export production line in Germany.  The chances of these two vehicles now being in the same place at the same time over 50 years later is a million to one.  Both cars were ordered from Mercedes Benz dealerships in NSW as tourist delivery vehicles.  This means that the customer purchases the car from the dealer and the customer then ventures over to Germany to the customer lounge where they wait for their car to come off the production line at the Sindelfingen plant. Well, picture the advertising back in the late 60s but I’m sure it wasn’t as glamorous as that.

As part of the tourist delivery vehicle option, the owners are then able to use the car to tour through Europe for 12 months and when they have completed their holiday it is then available to be imported into Australia without incurring any duties. Unfortunately, this option is no longer available but was used by many who could afford it, back in the day. Theo is very fortunate that his 6.3 has full documentation of its travels through Europe with all the services being documented in the service books. To compare the personalised options that the cars were ordered with one has Velour trim, sunroof with factory Webasto wind deflector and kilometers per hour speedometer. The other was ordered with leather, steel wheels with hubcaps. Each car was delivered with the rare option of the five piece luggage set which unfortunately are no longer with either of the cars. The standard options of these vehicles are factory air conditioning, central locking and air suspension.  Remember that it was the late 60s so most of these options were new and rarely available in most other makes and models.

Note the registration numbers are 24 numbers apart!!