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The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center’s Nate Lander · That Car Show

• 0:00
  My first project was a 1932 Meibach DS8.
• 0:04
  It's an 8 liter V12 Cabriolet and it's, you know, this massive
• 0:08
  vehicle and it's just the most gorgeous thing in the world.
• 0:11
  And I'm like, well, this is a pretty good way to start things
• 0:14
  off. Today on that car show, we've
• 0:16
  got our friend Nate Lander, who runs the shop at the
• 0:19
  Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Long Beach, CA.
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  When we talk about people who are living just the life that
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  they were meant to live, Nate is one of them.
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  Nate, along with his boss, our pal Mike Koontz, have built a
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  truly special place with the classic center and a truly
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  essential resource for us Mercedes-Benz fans in the United
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  States. Some of you listening may know
• 0:39
  Nate from the Colorado Grand. He's done something like 22 of
• 0:42
  them. Or maybe you know Nate from the
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  recent and excellent four part series he did with Tyler Hoover
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  on Hoovy's Garage where he and his dachshund Otto stole the
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  show. We'll be doing more with the
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  Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in the future, so stay tuned.
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  In the meantime, it's Nate Lander and it's a good one.
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  It's that car show. Welcome back to that car show.
• 1:06
  I'm Lindsay and I'm here with my Co host Ryan and our sometime Co
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  host and always friend Michael Osasso.
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  And tonight, we have a very special guest.
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  Nate Lander, the Workshop Manager of the Mercedes-Benz
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  Classic Center is with us. Hi, everybody.
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  Hello, good evening. So Nate and Ryan and Michael
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  have gotten to know each other through the Colorado Grand
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  because the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center is very involved
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  in that event. So I'm really looking forward to
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  hearing more about that because actually I'm the only one that
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  hasn't been yet. So we'll get into that in a bit,
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  right? Nate and I actually met last
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  fall when I got to go see the Classic Center in Long Beach
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  with our friend Johnny Lieberman.
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  And it was very exciting timing because the center had just
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  gotten the 1957300SL Roadster from the Rudy Klein auction.
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  And I've been seeing the auction all over social media.
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  And then to walk into the center and get to see a piece of not
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  only history, but something that was so, you know, integral in
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  this event that was a big, big, big deal in not only the LA car
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  community, but really the worldwide car community.
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  To get to see it up close and watch you start to get into it
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  was really cool. So I appreciate, you know, being
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  included in those moments. And then you and Mike toured us
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  around the facility. There are just so many
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  incredible cars and stories. So I'm excited to share that
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  with our audience. My personal favorites were the
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  600 series Mercedes which have those amazing air horns that you
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  demonstrated for us which was awesome.
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  And they're pretty famous for that.
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  Yeah, they were really cool. I hadn't seen those before.
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  And so that definitely has been a memory that I think of fairly
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  often. And then getting to see the
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  Jerry Seinfeld Oatmeal and Blueberry Mercedes up close with
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  the cell phone still in it. I remember we definitely
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  considered seeing if those numbers still functioned, which
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  was very funny. So welcome to the show.
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  We're really excited to have you and good to be here.
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  I'm excited to hear all your stories.
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  You took a really interesting path to get to Mercedes, so I
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  would love to hear because you started in Kansas.
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  So can you share how you ended up where you are?
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  So it's a long, a long, boring story, but it's some exciting
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  times within those boring times. Yeah.
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  So I I was actually just a kid from southern Kansas, grew up
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  just kind of on the Oklahoma, Kansas border and was in high
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  school. I was thinking about going into
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  engineering and my math scores were not something that an
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  engineer would ever look at. So I figured we got to probably
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  do something else. And I actually found out about
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  McPherson College through the show My Classic Car with Dennis
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  Gage. Remember the guy with the
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  handlebar mustache? And so I saw this on TV and I'm
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  like, this is amazing. There's like a college that
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  teaches how to work on old cars. And, you know, I grew up in a
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  family where we worked on old cars and played with all kinds
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  of stuff. And, and so I thought that'd be
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  pretty cool to do that. So I went up and I realized it's
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  right, you know, it's like 2 hours from my house.
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  And so went up there on a tour with, with my dad and, and we
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  looked at it and were like, my dad was like, can I come to
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  like, it would be really fun for an old guy?
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  And but so I did that right out of high school, went to, went to
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  that. And it was, you know, at the
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  time, my mom, I remember my mom asking me, she's like, do you
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  think you can actually make any money doing this?
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  And little did I know that I, this is a billion dollar
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  industry, no, multi billion dollar industry that we're in
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  and playing with car, old cars in particular.
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  And so, you know, graduated from the program and I, you know, I
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  had never looked at a Mercedes, knew anything about Mercedes.
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  Like coming out of a small town in Kansas.
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  I don't even think anybody in our town had a Mercedes, to be
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  honest. You know, I grew up on old
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  Chevy's and Oldsmobiles and all kinds of stuff like that.
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  So this, I don't know how it happened, but I read an article
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  about mix about Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Germany, that
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  they're opening this center to basically work on these cars
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  and, and have a factory level restoration thing.
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  And I thought that was kind of interesting that, that the
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  factory would care enough about their old cars to to do that.
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  And so this was at a time, this was kind of before Porsche was
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  doing it and Ferrari was doing, it was really only Mercedes and,
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  and maybe one or two other companies that were even doing
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  these types of things. And so I found some people in
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  the Mercedes-Benz club, I talked to them and I said, would it be
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  possible to like get an internship over there and go to
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  Germany? And they're like, well, nobody's
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  ever asked. So I guess we could see what
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  happens. And so we, we contacted through
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  MB USA through a lovely lady named Mary Alice Ritzman, who
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  used to do all the press stuff for the classic side.
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  And she, she reached out to her and we met and, and met with
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  the, the head of what was going to be the classic center
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  initially. And he said, well, we can try.
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  And you know, it's a union shop in Germany.
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  It's a little bit different program of how things work from
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  going from like, you know, elementary school, high school,
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  college to a trade school type of thing.
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  And so they, they, it would took about six months while I was in
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  college and we worked it out and I took some German, like really
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  basic German classes just to try to learn a little bit how to
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  order, you know, a beer would be nice.
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  Essential. Essential stuff.
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  Really critical things. And so it worked out and like
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  the summer of 2002, I got on a plane.
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  I mean, I had never been really out of the Midwest.
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  I mean, I, we did a trip to DC when I was in high school and
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  that was the furthest EI had ever been.
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  And so, and this is I had no cell phone, nothing like that.
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  I don't think I had a credit card.
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  I think I just had like a like a debit card and some cash.
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  And my parents put me on, took me to the airport in Wichita and
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  said, go live your dream, do what you want to do.
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  And so I left and ended up in Germany for a ground total about
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  nine months that I was there. And my very first day, you know,
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  I walked in and the first thing was like, well, why are you
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  here? And I'm like, well, I'm here to
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  work on cars. And they were kind of surprised
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  at first. They're like, well, you know,
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  what are we going to do with this kid?
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  You know, 'cause I was, I was maybe 1920, like I was, you
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  know, right out of school. So they kind of set me up and
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  they gave me my first project was a 1932 Meibach DS8.
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  It's an 8 liter V12 cabriolet and it's, you know, this massive
• 7:46
  vehicle and it's just the most gorgeous thing in the world.
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  And I'm like, well, this is a pretty good way to start things
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  off. And so, you know, just basic,
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  you know, doing a tune up or something like that and, and,
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  and kind of learning from there. But so yeah, that's kind of like
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  the first part of how I got into this world.
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  And then eventually I, I was thinking about, OK, what do I do
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  after this internship? I said, well, we have this idea.
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  We're going to have a classic center in California and
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  there's, we've hired one guy, his name is Mike Koontz, and
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  he's going to run it. And so your employee number 2,
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  if you want to be. And so I said, well, it sounds
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  like a really interesting adventure and we'll, we'll see
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  what happens. So I ended up going to New
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  Jersey and worked for Home Office.
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  That's when our Home Office was in Montville, NJ, which was
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  there for I think 30 years or something.
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  We were in New Jersey or it's in like North Bergen County, New
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  Jersey. And so we were there and moved,
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  moved to New Jersey with a Dodge Ram pickup truck and drove
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  across the country and, and, you know, kind of lived there and it
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  for about it's about 2 1/2 years that, that Mike and myself and a
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  couple other people, we, we worked on just building this
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  idea of what the classic Center could be.
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  And, and really that was it. Like that was the parameters
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  that they gave us and the rest of it we just invented so and.
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  The rest is history. The rest is history ended up.
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  Or the future. Yeah, the future.
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  I mean, it really is. Yeah, yeah.
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  So what was? Scarier moving to Germany or
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  moving to New Jersey? From a cultural perspective,
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  they're they're very different. I'd say from a language
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  perspective too. There's a, you know, language is
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  a big one, you know, and I was. I was both places, right?
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  Yeah. Yeah, well, and also it was
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  really interesting to to leave the United States in effectively
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  June of 2002. You got to remember we're we're
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  a year back from 911, right? And so there was this really
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  high, I used to listen to Armed Forces Radio out of like
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  Heidelberg, right? Because it was, it was the only
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  English language stations that I could find.
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  And I have a little radio, in fact, I still have it in my
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  office somewhere. It's a little radio, transistor
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  radio. I bought it like, you know, this
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  store. And I would, I would listen to
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  the radio in, in what I could understand.
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  And it was all about, you know, force protection and make sure,
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  you know, you're, you're not talking in public because you
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  wouldn't want somebody to, you know, grab you or something like
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  that. So it's really interesting to,
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  to be in a, in Europe while this was going on.
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  And then you had anti war protests going on in Germany and
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  in other places. And so that was really weird to
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  be over there while all this was going down with, with Iraq too.
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  And, and then coming back and then being, you know, I remember
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  going to Ground Zero down in New York, you know, this was in like
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  an O3 and it's still just giant hole in the ground.
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  And, and so I got it was a really interesting time to be
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  in, in that part of the world a little bit and, but I liked it.
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  It was great. And you know, my, my dad's from
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  New Jersey, grew up in, in Hoboken, NJ, So it was like
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  coming back to my his roots in a way, which is cool.
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  Given Sinatra. Yeah, Sinatra.
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  Actually. It's funny enough my grandmother
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  retouched photos by hand for Frank Sinatra in the early days
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  when he was starting out. I.
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  Was there to retouch I mean he. Was a yeah yeah, old was the old
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  blue eyes or whatever. Yeah, so or.
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  What a little more blue never heard.
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  She would do colorization so she would artistically color in the
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  photos. Wow and and add color into them
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  for publicity shots and stuff like that.
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  People Studio on Washington St. in Hoboken's where she works.
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  That's incredible. So she was old blue eyes after
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  Nate's grandmother got a hold of the photos.
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  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, we'll make whatever
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  color you want. So right.
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  Do you have any? Have you found any or no tracked
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  any down? There was when he died.
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  There's actually a Time magazine photograph and it's, it's the
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  only photo we we think it's my grandmother in the background of
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  the photo. There's like a whole bunch of
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  people around him and it looks exactly like my grandmother.
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  And it's taken in Hoboken at that time, so.
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  Then it is that that that is the story.
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  Yeah, that's what. We're going to train AI to say
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  like that. That is going to be the the
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  Canon from now on. We're declaring it to be so
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  that's incredible. That's awesome.
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  Yeah. Well, that that's a really
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  interesting. It was such an interesting time,
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  I think in general in the world and you got a very unique view
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  of it sort of from the outside almost.
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  So that's. Yeah, yeah.
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  Well, the other thing that was really cool was when we were
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  there, it was the 50th anniversary of the 300 SL
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  Gullwing was that year. SO191954 was when the Gullwing
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  debuted in New York City. And this was at the old, I think
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  they call it the Armory, which was the old before Madison
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  Square Goddard. And they had this like Armory
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  thing. And so the, they built a stand
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  and the, the prototype goal wing was on display.
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  And next to it was the 1st 190 SL prototype as well.
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  And so they debuted in New York. They didn't debut in Europe
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  because that was something that Max Hoffman wanted for the US
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  market. And so since it was New York,
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  they debuted it there. And so for the 50th anniversary,
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  we recreated the stand. There's the circular round stand
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  and it's like red, like crushed velvet with the car on it.
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  And it has flowers all around the bottom.
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  And we had the opportunity to recreate that for the New York
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  Auto show in at the Javits Center.
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  So I, I was listening to your previous podcasts about when you
• 13:15
  guys were in LA and talking about auto shows and things like
• 13:17
  that. And, and I remember we had that
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  and then we had the, the very first SLR McLaren show car when
• 13:26
  it came out. So for me that's weird now that
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  that that's a classic because that's the first like new car
• 13:33
  that I remember working for Mercedes.
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  So now I'm I'm in the old car world of new cars.
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  Yeah, you're not the young guy in the office anymore either,
• 13:41
  are you? No, we've got some younger guys
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  that are coming in. I, I, you know, Jen, we don't
• 13:48
  have any Jen Zers yet, but we're, we're, we're, you know,
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  kind of millennialed a little bit in our, in our growth.
• 13:54
  So we'll get there eventually. Yeah, that's true, right.
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  Well, and when you think about that's that's kind of the car
• 14:01
  equivalent of all the Instagram jokes where they're like, well,
• 14:04
  yeah, 1995 was two years ago, so.
• 14:07
  You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's so funny, you know, I
• 14:11
  remember we, you know, the Silver Arrow.
• 14:13
  There's a Silver Arrow edition R129 that it was in around 2002.
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  And it's one of our favorite cars.
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  We've sold, I don't know, a dozen of them over the years.
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  And actually Mike bought Matt Stone's old car because Matt
• 14:27
  Stone had one. And so he bought his, when he
• 14:30
  wanted to sell it, he moved out, you know, north, was it in like
• 14:35
  kind of Calabasas area, I think, or whatever it was.
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  And he's like, I, I don't need any more.
• 14:39
  You can buy it. So he bought it and he has that
• 14:41
  now in his little, his collection as well.
• 14:44
  And I remember going back to our product management people and
• 14:48
  this was like maybe O5 or O6 that I went back to them and I
• 14:52
  said, hey, I'm looking for some production numbers on the on the
• 14:55
  SL500 and the SL600 Silver Arrows and stuff like that.
• 14:58
  And they said, what are you talking about?
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  That's an old car because in product management world, last
• 15:04
  year's an old car already and we're on to the next car so.
• 15:08
  Yeah, it's funny, mentioned Matt Stone actually recording with
• 15:10
  him next week. He's got this new book called
• 15:13
  Ride about the Hollywood cars of the silver screen or whatever.
• 15:16
  It's him and Chad Oppenheim and someone else whose name is
• 15:20
  escaping me at the but Chris. Yes, and Jay Leno, who you may
• 15:24
  have heard. Of yeah, yeah.
• 15:26
  I don't think Jay Leno's going to make the recording, but it
• 15:28
  would be nice if he did. But you need to ask Matt if he's
• 15:31
  got the briefcase, because Mike Coons was mentioning to me that,
• 15:35
  that, that the all those came with a briefcase, which I had
• 15:38
  heard all the 500 and 600 came with this.
• 15:41
  And he made an anecdote about those briefcases.
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  Like they couldn't give them away.
• 15:47
  They were like kind of these this thing that the people in
• 15:49
  the office were just like running around with these, with
• 15:52
  these Silver Arrow briefcases because either the the client
• 15:55
  declined them, they didn't need them, or they forgot to pick
• 15:58
  them up or whatever. Well, I think it was so Bart
• 16:00
  Herring, who's with us again at MB USA, he's one of our vice
• 16:04
  presidents and and it was great seeing at Pebble Beach this
• 16:07
  year. We, we were talking about
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  because we had it at Pebble and we had some of the journalists
• 16:10
  could drive that we have one in our fleet.
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  And he was saying about like what Michael's talking about.
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  Like when they were giving them to like their kids to put their
• 16:18
  like toys in, like it was just, they would just give them away
• 16:21
  to whoever want. Because the thing was they
• 16:23
  didn't know how many necessarily cars they were going to sell of
• 16:26
  that model series. So they had to order a certain
• 16:28
  number of suit briefcases. And so they ended up with extra
• 16:31
  ones. And now to get one it's like
• 16:33
  impossible and. They're.
• 16:34
  Unobtaining so and so. He has that briefcase because
• 16:37
  Mike Coons wants it. Yeah, we could broker a deal.
• 16:40
  We could bring always. Like a happy medium, it's always
• 16:43
  what you don't think is going to be worth something.
• 16:44
  You're like, I'll just throw this away and then it's
• 16:47
  something so. Yeah, the benefit of hindsight,
• 16:49
  I mean, you look back at all of the cars that were raced in
• 16:51
  Europe and then when they came back to the States, the
• 16:53
  manufacturers were like, couldn't get them out of there
• 16:56
  fast enough. And now, you know, we look back
• 16:59
  and you're like, but it has this provenance and it's just
• 17:02
  amazing. But well, for, for, for us, it's
• 17:04
  the 300 SL Roadster. So like the 300 SL roadster at
• 17:07
  the very end of production in like 63 going into a little bit
• 17:12
  into 64, like from a delivery perspective, Mercedes-Benz
• 17:16
  couldn't get rid of them. Like people didn't want them
• 17:18
  because the Pagoda had debuted the 2:30 SL, which was arguably
• 17:22
  a far less superior car in terms of all out performance.
• 17:26
  And so if you look at the numbers like they're all, a lot
• 17:30
  of them are white with a red interior, because if somebody
• 17:34
  wanted to paint it blue, it's much easier just to scuff and
• 17:37
  shoot it blue after it's been white.
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  And so now that's the most desirable of the roadsters
• 17:42
  because it's an alloy block with disc brakes.
• 17:45
  And So what was undesirable switched to being desirable.
• 17:51
  Well, that begs the question. Let's talk.
• 17:52
  I've looked at it. I've I've owned 2120 nines and I
• 17:54
  love them. And and and we were talking to
• 17:56
  Dick a Pebble about about Mike's.
• 17:58
  But like, where does the kind of cut off for you happen?
• 18:01
  Because I know they'll for instance, that those silver
• 18:03
  arrows, they had that specific wood.
• 18:05
  I I forget which type of wood was specifically in the in, in
• 18:08
  the silver arrows, But like most of the ones I would look at over
• 18:10
  the years, it's you know, it's you know, Southern Cal, it's
• 18:13
  been cracked. It's, it's, you know, I don't
• 18:14
  even know where you would even go to get that replaced or more
• 18:18
  importantly restored. So for you at the classic
• 18:20
  center, is there a cut off? Like where, where do you guys
• 18:24
  fit? Obviously the, the older stuff
• 18:25
  we know you guys are experts in and you have the, the, the
• 18:28
  skills and the technology. But where does that, where does
• 18:31
  that as we joked about earlier about the 20 years even since
• 18:34
  you've been there, where does that cut off start to doesn't
• 18:36
  like you mentioned even the SLR, those are starting to get redone
• 18:39
  and and so kind of how does that factor in going forward?
• 18:42
  Well, I'll say this, I have three SLR Mclarens right now in
• 18:45
  the shop. So that is fully into our
• 18:48
  wheelhouse. And, and part of it is because
• 18:51
  it's sort of in the, in the, in the same, you got to remember
• 18:53
  that's the car that came out with a career GT, right?
• 18:56
  So it's like career GT, the GT40 and the SLR McLaren all really
• 19:00
  came out together as a, as a group.
• 19:02
  And there's, there's some great shots of the three cars together
• 19:04
  that they did when they debuted. And it's sort of the same thing
• 19:08
  with the career GT. It's, it's something that not
• 19:11
  every dealership is necessarily equipped to handle, or in our
• 19:15
  case, a lot of the dealers, they had a specific Bay for the SLR.
• 19:19
  They had a trained technician that was working there when they
• 19:22
  were new. And then now that they've gone
• 19:24
  away, you know, the SLR Lyft got sold off.
• 19:27
  They they trashed the tools. They didn't necessarily keep all
• 19:29
  that stuff. And so now we're getting into,
• 19:32
  well, who's going to take care of those cars going forward?
• 19:35
  Well, it's a, it's a, it's a high level Halo car for us.
• 19:38
  So it does make sense for us to take care of those, you know, a
• 19:42
  2002, you know, C230, you know, maybe not necessarily something
• 19:47
  we're going to work on here at the classic center, although we
• 19:50
  could if we had to. So there is a bit of a, it's a
• 19:53
  difficult area to necessarily work on some of these newer
• 19:57
  cars. A lot of this is derived from
• 20:01
  the parts that they're made out of.
• 20:02
  So like a 300 SL, there's not one piece of plastic on the
• 20:06
  whole car. It's it's brass, it's aluminum,
• 20:09
  it's. Steel, it's, you know,
• 20:12
  magnesium, all those types of things.
• 20:14
  So it's leather, paint, it's all very repeatable.
• 20:18
  So you can take a 300SL and you could restore it five times over
• 20:22
  its life cycle. Let's say your life cycle is 200
• 20:25
  years, 300 years because we're thinking long term, an R129 with
• 20:29
  all of its plastic parts and wiring harness, plastic and
• 20:33
  visor clips and things like that.
• 20:35
  This is where the challenges start to arise because now
• 20:38
  you're like, OK, I've got to make this piece of wood.
• 20:41
  Like because the veneers popped off, I can, I can re veneer
• 20:45
  that. That's probably not the end of
• 20:46
  the world. But if the cup holder breaks,
• 20:48
  now it's a piece of plastic. And now there are some good
• 20:53
  resources. Like certainly we have parts
• 20:56
  available for those cars, but not everything in every color.
• 20:59
  And that was the other thing too, is you had a proliferation,
• 21:02
  especially the 90s, if you remember some of these wild
• 21:05
  interiors was like, we're going to make purple sun visors and
• 21:08
  we're going to make, you know, neon green weather.
• 21:10
  The. Anniversary cars that come out
• 21:12
  in, like, just weird shades. Yeah.
• 21:13
  And. They're awesome and I love it,
• 21:15
  but I don't necessarily think we can make every color of every
• 21:20
  possible combination. And I I will say Jay is a great
• 21:24
  guy. We love Jay.
• 21:25
  You know, he's one of our customers with, with parts.
• 21:27
  He calls all the time for getting parts for his stuff and
• 21:30
  he does he, he does a great job of talking us up and we
• 21:33
  appreciate it. But he's made the statement one
• 21:34
  time. They can get any part for any
• 21:36
  car ever made. And we're like, Oh no, please
• 21:39
  don't tell. Please don't tell them that
• 21:40
  because we can't. It's just, it's not, it's not
• 21:43
  possible. This is the question of like,
• 21:44
  where, where do you, where do you guys, you know, I know you
• 21:46
  talk about the SLR being a Halo car, but like, are you feeling
• 21:49
  some of the gap that maybe the aftermarket feels now for like
• 21:52
  all the, the cylinders for the top of a 129 or the wiring
• 21:56
  harnesses for a 140? Or, you know, kind of those
• 21:59
  those Middlesex that aren't full restorations, but yet help keep
• 22:03
  keep these cars on the road and and kind of engender them to the
• 22:06
  next generation. Yeah, I think that's one thing
• 22:09
  that I'm really happy that there's a really supportive
• 22:13
  aftermarket world for a lot of this stuff.
• 22:16
  So for example, like top hydraulics, they they are great
• 22:19
  at, you know, I can send them all the hydraulic units for an
• 22:22
  R129 or 1:24. They can rebuild those.
• 22:25
  We can get them back, we can put it together, you know, the, from
• 22:29
  the wood to plating, you know, all the, there's so many great
• 22:33
  vendors out there. And there's another company
• 22:35
  that's doing a lot of the plastic components that, you
• 22:38
  know, if it's something that we can't get any more that they're,
• 22:40
  they're doing and then, you know, wiring harnesses, you
• 22:44
  know, we're there more and more of that stuff is becoming
• 22:47
  available again. And it's, it's an interesting
• 22:49
  cycle. Like there's, there's times
• 22:51
  where something's not available for 10 years and all of a sudden
• 22:54
  it pops up and there's, you know, 1000 of them sitting in
• 22:57
  inventory in, in Germany or here in the United States.
• 23:01
  So it's a, it's an interesting area with the newer cars and,
• 23:05
  and the, the, the ultra Halo stuff.
• 23:08
  Like we, you know, we have a customer with a CLKGTR and we
• 23:12
  work on that from time to time. And that's like working on an
• 23:15
  airplane or something. It's not like working on a car
• 23:19
  because like everything is so differently constructed.
• 23:24
  And those are very much like knowing which manufacturer made
• 23:28
  the connector because it's all like mil spec grade connectors.
• 23:31
  Interesting. And so, you know, we had an
• 23:34
  issue with the transmission would not it would not get
• 23:36
  signal to tell it to shift. And these are not, you know,
• 23:39
  they're not like a big canvas system where they're, you know,
• 23:42
  control units talking to each other.
• 23:44
  This is still kind of old school.
• 23:46
  I flip a switch and something happens.
• 23:48
  And so we really had to, to, to work on finding out who made it.
• 23:52
  And then the other problem we discovered is like, for example,
• 23:55
  that car has the jacking system where you flip a switch and
• 23:58
  hydraulically lifts the entire car so you can change a tire.
• 24:01
  That was the whole idea that, you know, if you were on the
• 24:04
  side of the road and you, you could change a tire, although it
• 24:06
  doesn't come with a spare, but it's a service Jack anyway that
• 24:11
  you could, you could do that. And what we found was that the
• 24:13
  company that made all those components originally for AM
• 24:17
  GHWA, unfortunately they sold the company to a company that
• 24:22
  sold it to a company that sold it to a company.
• 24:24
  And so the problem is, is that the part numbers don't exchange
• 24:27
  from one company to another. And so you end up, I probably
• 24:31
  spent 4050 hours of my time just trying to find out, OK, this
• 24:37
  hydraulic cylinder was made by this company, but it used a
• 24:40
  potentiometer from this company. And then how do we put this all
• 24:43
  together to make it work and fix the problem?
• 24:47
  Because it's not like, it's not like there's a shelf somewhere
• 24:50
  in Germany where like, oh, these are all the CLK GTR parts and
• 24:53
  you can just call up and we'll send it to you.
• 24:55
  It doesn't really work that way. So what?
• 24:58
  It was very much like your car. Is, yeah.
• 25:00
  It's, but it's your earlier statement of product planning is
• 25:02
  looking at what's next, not what came before.
• 25:04
  And, and you guys do such a great service.
• 25:07
  And I, I mean, it's honestly that, that you're preserving the
• 25:10
  past by preserving the future because if you don't do what you
• 25:13
  do. And yes, the three hundreds and
• 25:16
  the SLRS and, and even the pagoda stuff like those are all
• 25:18
  Halo cars and, and, and coveted for a lot of good reasons.
• 25:21
  But even the small things matter to your point about the plastics
• 25:25
  and all that, because how many cars get totaled out, not just
• 25:28
  from a practical purpose for an even insurance purpose.
• 25:30
  If you can't, you know, unobtainium right then, then it,
• 25:33
  it can kind of kills a whole generation of people wanting and
• 25:36
  pursuing not just the the automotive hobby, but also as a
• 25:41
  possible career. So like there needs to be some,
• 25:43
  some thought to the future, which obviously doesn't really
• 25:46
  happen at the product level or the next year's model cycle
• 25:50
  level. So we'll see.
• 25:51
  And, well, there's. Within Mercedes-Benz in, in
• 25:54
  Germany, we call it Mercedes-Benz Heritage, which is
• 25:56
  the umbrella group that is museum, it's classic center,
• 26:00
  it's archives, it's, you know, events, that sort of thing.
• 26:03
  And so they have a whole team of people.
• 26:05
  And then once, once a part is sort of deemed into the classic
• 26:09
  realm, it goes over to their purview and they're responsible
• 26:13
  for deciding like which components are we going to
• 26:16
  continue to make? Because again, we can't make
• 26:18
  everything. So we have to really choose our
• 26:20
  battles and, and part of it. I use the example.
• 26:23
  It's like, you know, let's say you had a, a, a 2003 S class,
• 26:30
  right? And 2W2, which I think Doug
• 26:33
  Demiro said it's his favorite S class ever, is the W 220.
• 26:36
  Series. So of course he.
• 26:37
  Did I completely disagree? But you know, I'm, I'm the
• 26:40
  purist. I'll go back to Paul Brock and
• 26:42
  1/1/26, that sort of thing. But anyway, that's what keeps
• 26:45
  it. Interesting though, right?
• 26:46
  Yeah, You know, we got their little battles about which of
• 26:49
  our favorite S classes it is. But this is some really nerdy
• 26:53
  topics when you start getting into that stuff.
• 26:54
  But what? Yeah, one of the things that we
• 26:57
  that comes up is, is sort of like saying I'm going to take my
• 27:01
  iPhone 1 and I'm going to take it.
• 27:04
  And I want you to make this work on the current network in the
• 27:08
  current circumstances and make it totally functional.
• 27:12
  And it's like, you'd have to sort of like go in a time
• 27:14
  machine and go back and figure out how they made them in the
• 27:16
  first place. Because the technology has
• 27:18
  advanced so fast that some of the suppliers, I'm sure that
• 27:22
  made components for the iPhone 1 don't make those parts anymore
• 27:26
  or that they're completely obsoleted.
• 27:28
  And so like if you're in a control unit for, you know, a
• 27:32
  wiper climate, a wiper control unit or something, that may not
• 27:36
  be possible that that can be reproduced or you're going to
• 27:39
  have to make the technology to go back and reproduce it in the
• 27:42
  first place and, and, and not go back to the original
• 27:45
  manufacturer. So these are some of the big
• 27:47
  topic things that we have to deal with and and I'm on the
• 27:51
  service end of it. So I'm the, I'm just like all
• 27:53
  the viewers out there and listeners out there where you're
• 27:55
  like, hey, I really need that part.
• 27:58
  I'm in the same boat you are because I need that part too.
• 28:01
  Have we established exactly what the classic center is?
• 28:04
  Because I think, you know, we all know and, and have known the
• 28:06
  Center for a long time, but we should give Mike a shout out too
• 28:09
  because he just celebrated. Mike Coons just celebrated his
• 28:12
  40th year with Mercedes-Benz. That's just not a number you
• 28:15
  hear anymore, right? I mean, which is really an
• 28:17
  achievement and it's really him that that that established right
• 28:21
  with you the the center as we know it.
• 28:23
  But but what is the center? I think probably Hoovey
• 28:26
  introduced the classic center to a lot of people recently and you
• 28:29
  could talk about that. But but what do you do?
• 28:31
  Because your archives, your parts, so you tell us.
• 28:34
  So the, the mission statement I would say for, for us is, really
• 28:39
  is, is handling anything that's sort of 20 years out of
• 28:43
  production roughly. So on the on the service side,
• 28:47
  it's about 15 years on the part side of it.
• 28:50
  So that's a broad spectrum. I mean that's 1886, you know, up
• 28:54
  into the 2000s. And so we're here to take care
• 28:57
  of you in in from a parts perspective, obviously that's
• 29:00
  very important service restoration.
• 29:03
  We do car sales, we do events here at the Classic Center.
• 29:07
  We have a gift shop, we have accessories, we have all kind of
• 29:10
  the things that you would expect of, of an operation like that.
• 29:13
  And we, we really, we want to be the center of competence for
• 29:18
  our, our clients out there. You know, we have, let's say you
• 29:20
  buy a AA300SL going and you want to know the history of it.
• 29:24
  You can order a data card from our department and we'll
• 29:27
  research it. We'll print the file
• 29:30
  electronically, send it to you. And now you have a, a data card
• 29:34
  that, you know, tells you about the vehicle as it was produced.
• 29:38
  We do that. We do hundreds and hundreds of
• 29:40
  data card requests every month and that's all a, a big part of
• 29:44
  what we do as well. We do the high mileage award.
• 29:46
  So we've got clients that have 1,000,000 miles on their, on
• 29:49
  their car multiple. We've got quite a few of those.
• 29:53
  I'm, I'm always surprised at how many cars are out there with,
• 29:55
  with 1,000,000 miles or you know, 1,000,000 kilometers or,
• 29:59
  or you know, 2, I think it's 250,000 kilometers, 500,000
• 30:03
  kilometers and so on. And so we administer that
• 30:06
  program as well. And then all the events that we
• 30:09
  do from MO to Miami, we do San Marino, Concord here in, in the
• 30:14
  Pasadena, San Marino area every year, which is a great event.
• 30:18
  We do Pebble Beach, obviously that one's kind of our, our, you
• 30:20
  know, the, the locked in the chamber doing it every year
• 30:24
  event. And then we do, you know, we
• 30:26
  support their Mercedes-Benz club, the 300 SL, the going
• 30:30
  group. So it's really about community.
• 30:33
  It's about helping people to continue to drive their car
• 30:37
  because ultimately that's what we built them for.
• 30:40
  You know, the, all the people that have come before us that
• 30:42
  worked so hard to build a 300 SL wanted, wanted people to drive
• 30:46
  them, you know, for, for a long time.
• 30:49
  I don't necessarily think that anybody that built those in the
• 30:51
  1950s could have ever imagined what level of that car is now
• 30:58
  from a Halo and, and value perspective.
• 31:00
  It's just unbelievable. Well, it's, again, it's the
• 31:05
  value of hindsight where you know, and now we know and we
• 31:08
  look back and realize what a feat it was at the time.
• 31:11
  And I think, I think there were two of those that you had in one
• 31:15
  of the rooms when I was there. And we got to see the difference
• 31:19
  in, and you'll have to correct me if it was, it may have been
• 31:23
  Gullwings, but it was the way they were doing the framing and
• 31:26
  one of them was pulled apart and you could kind of see the
• 31:28
  skeleton and they were different years.
• 31:31
  And maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
• 31:32
  Yeah, I think tube frame. Yeah, so all the 300SL roadsters
• 31:37
  and gullings use a tube frame or kind of a birdcage style of of
• 31:41
  frame unit. And that was really designed by
• 31:44
  Rudolf Ullenhalt, who is our our chief designer and engineer at
• 31:48
  the time. And he what he was really
• 31:50
  brilliant about is he was experimenting after the war with
• 31:53
  making like a small single seat tubular chassis, almost making
• 31:58
  it these very thin Chrome Molly tubes that were welded together
• 32:02
  in triangles to make him ultra strong.
• 32:04
  And so he built a little experimental car for that.
• 32:07
  And they had this idea for the 300SL ultimately.
• 32:11
  And that really is the key to the whole thing because there's
• 32:15
  no other way to really make a goal wing in 1954 that didn't
• 32:23
  utilize the space frame technology.
• 32:25
  It, you know, this, this tube frame chassis.
• 32:28
  And so I always tell people like, it's a fascinating, the
• 32:31
  thing to see it, you know, with the body off and you see this
• 32:34
  beautiful tube frame and it's, you know, it only weighs like
• 32:37
  100 and I forget it's like 160 lbs or something.
• 32:39
  It's not super heavy. And you think about it, these
• 32:43
  guys made 1400 goal wings and 1858 roadsters by hand And
• 32:49
  there's a, their gas welding every joint together by hand.
• 32:54
  And you're like the, the, the, the passion of doing that and
• 32:58
  the, the, the making of really high quality product, especially
• 33:03
  for a company that was just completely decimated after the
• 33:05
  war. There was, there wasn't much
• 33:07
  left of Intraturkayim or Sindelfingen after the war
• 33:10
  because it was bombed so heavily.
• 33:12
  And so they came back from, you know, the, the 1940840950 up
• 33:18
  into 52 and they went back to racing in 52 with this, this
• 33:21
  revolutionary 300SL. And so it's really a a
• 33:25
  fascinating time and, and for a company that didn't have a lot
• 33:28
  of money and we talked about Max Hoffman, he's the only reason we
• 33:32
  have the 300 SL because he's the one that said, I'll buy 1000 of
• 33:35
  them if you can make this car. He knew that that would be a big
• 33:39
  hit, especially here in the American market where that are
• 33:42
  pretty much was was dominating in.
• 33:44
  Max had a good crystal ball. Too bad we all can't.
• 33:47
  Use that. Well, and Speaking of, you know
• 33:50
  the 300 SL Roadster like you mentioned and so the classic
• 33:54
  Center or Mercedes-Benz bought one of the ones from the Rudy
• 33:58
  Klein auction, which is the one I got to see in the fall.
• 34:00
  And you were telling us before we started kind of where that
• 34:03
  car is now. Like, can you talk a little bit
• 34:05
  about being at the auction, what that was like, you know, finding
• 34:10
  out that you had won the car and like what it was?
• 34:13
  Like to get it, we didn't actually, we didn't win that
• 34:15
  car. So that actually we we were the
• 34:18
  low, we were the second bidder on the alloy goaling and we
• 34:22
  stopped bidding at like 9 million and we were like, you
• 34:25
  know, we probably should get out at this point so.
• 34:28
  We're going to fall out gracefully.
• 34:30
  Right. We, we really wanted that car
• 34:31
  And, and so we, we worked it out to where we, we could, you know,
• 34:35
  it took a lot of talking to some higher ups to be willing to do
• 34:39
  that. But so we, we wanted to do that
• 34:41
  as a, as a possibility. And so the roadster and the gull
• 34:45
  wing were really interesting for us.
• 34:46
  And so though I think the roadster was first before the
• 34:49
  gull wing on the, on the auction.
• 34:51
  And so a, a good, a good customer and friend of ours, he
• 34:55
  purchased the vehicle and he basically said, like, do you
• 35:00
  think this would actually run and drive this, this roadster?
• 35:03
  I'm like, you know what we can try because it's, it's fairly,
• 35:06
  you know, mechanically it was pretty complete.
• 35:09
  The challenge with that car was we, we got it in like N1 of last
• 35:15
  year and the goal was to have it running and driving at a track
• 35:20
  and driving across the field at MO to Miami.
• 35:24
  And that was 45 days. So we had 45 days to get it
• 35:28
  running, get it driving, make it reliable.
• 35:29
  And the last time it had run, we looked at the battery in the
• 35:33
  back. I think you were there when we
• 35:35
  pulled it out and it was from 1973, I think was the little
• 35:40
  stamp on the sticker. So we think it had not been
• 35:43
  moved since 73 and we know it had not been off the property.
• 35:47
  That was the first time it had been off the property since like
• 35:49
  73. So it was there a very, very
• 35:51
  long time. There were a lot of discoveries
• 35:53
  that day. Yeah, a lot of a lot of mouth.
• 35:56
  Droppings being opened. Also from 1973.
• 36:00
  Yeah, yeah, a lot of virus. So yeah, we unlocked some
• 36:04
  potential viruses and all kinds of things when we got open, but
• 36:10
  it was cool. So we were able to get it
• 36:12
  running under its own power. And we the challenging part with
• 36:16
  that project was there were so many pieces missing from a
• 36:19
  cosmetic perspective. If you remember, it had no
• 36:22
  grill, no front bumper, no back bumper, had no soft top, no tono
• 36:26
  cover, no seats. I mean I think it had half of 1
• 36:29
  seat. Yeah, there was, There was a
• 36:31
  remnant. There was a suggestion.
• 36:32
  Of a seat there was a suggestion of a seat.
• 36:34
  There was also no the all the gauges were were gone and they
• 36:38
  had put in pagoda gauge. And so in the end, and this is
• 36:43
  going to like blow people away, but to find a speedometer, A
• 36:47
  tachometer, a clock and the center cluster, which on a
• 36:50
  roadster is this beautiful center cluster with four little
• 36:54
  like they turn they're like little Barber pole looking
• 36:57
  things for the fuel oil and water.
• 37:01
  I ended up finding them. It took about four or five
• 37:04
  different people from all over the United States and Canada to
• 37:07
  make a whole set of gauges because it's just they don't
• 37:09
  exist. And it was $40,000 in the end
• 37:13
  just to find the gauges for that car.
• 37:15
  And so I mean, the Klein brothers probably sold those
• 37:18
  gauges or the thought, you know, we probably stole those pages
• 37:21
  for like, you know, 100 bucks here take.
• 37:23
  A clock? Nothing.
• 37:24
  You know, and I think just the tack alone, we spent like 3
• 37:27
  grand or something on it. So you know, and they're all 57
• 37:31
  date coded correct gauges and that was really the challenge.
• 37:35
  And so we found that and then we found a soft top and a frame and
• 37:40
  a Tonneau cover, the soft top lid cover.
• 37:43
  We found that in Germany and we're able to purchase that for
• 37:46
  that and find all the pieces. And it was really cool.
• 37:50
  We took it to the racetrack in, in Miami and we ran it and it,
• 37:54
  it actually ran remarkably good. We had actually Tyler hoodie
• 37:58
  drove it there. He was one of the coolest Schmee
• 38:01
  drove it. We had a bunch of other guys
• 38:03
  drive it and, and girls drive it.
• 38:05
  And they were like, this is so ridiculous that this was in a
• 38:08
  junkyard, you know, 40-5 days ago.
• 38:11
  And now it's running car. And it really was to show that
• 38:14
  like this can be done and it's it can be done fairly quickly.
• 38:19
  My favorite though, is the YouTube commenter put like, oh,
• 38:21
  you could send that to so and so I won't mention who it was.
• 38:25
  You know, some TV show restoration show, they get that
• 38:28
  running in a in an afternoon and you're like, well, it's OK.
• 38:31
  Sure. Yeah.
• 38:32
  So you know you're. Absolutely right.
• 38:34
  We'll just do. That yes, exactly so and then
• 38:37
  the other one that was really fascinating.
• 38:38
  It's been on Jay Leno's garage, which was the, the alloy Guling,
• 38:42
  which was the, IT is the, the biggest piece of that collection
• 38:45
  was the alloy Guling. And for those of you that don't
• 38:48
  know, it's the last unrestored alloy.
• 38:50
  They only built 29 cars that were aluminum bodied and, and
• 38:54
  it's the only one that hasn't been restored of all of them.
• 38:57
  And it's probably we just did a physical inspection on the
• 39:01
  vehicle recently where we took a lot of it apart and we looked at
• 39:05
  all the sort of secret stampings and numbers that we know of and
• 39:09
  it's, it's got to be probably the most original alloy car in
• 39:13
  the world. Like it's just amazingly good
• 39:16
  and it needs some work too. It's unfortunately that motor's
• 39:19
  locked up, so it's going to need the full sort of Monty.
• 39:22
  But anyway, so we're we actually got the we took the engine out
• 39:27
  because we had some rod issues with that with the roadster in
• 39:31
  Miami. So we took the engine out and we
• 39:33
  dyno tested it actually yesterday for the first time
• 39:36
  fully rebuilt. But cosmetically, it looks like
• 39:40
  it came out of the car when it was at the junkyard, which was
• 39:42
  kind of a cool project. And we had to tell some of our
• 39:46
  vendors like you, you can't make it look better.
• 39:48
  It's, it's got to look rusty and it's got to look crusty and, and
• 39:52
  that's just the way it is. So we, we rebuilt it completely.
• 39:55
  It's, you know, all new internals and, and so around the
• 39:58
  dyno and everything, we're working great.
• 40:00
  So we'll have that back together again.
• 40:02
  And so you'll see it out in the world somewhere again.
• 40:06
  And then hopefully the idea is to maybe do the same thing to
• 40:08
  the alloy going. If the owner requests to do
• 40:11
  that, we could we could certainly do that as well.
• 40:14
  To make it an operational vehicle and again, and then it
• 40:18
  can always be restored at some point in its life, right?
• 40:21
  But it's only gonna be that way once.
• 40:24
  And so we kind of would like to keep it that way.
• 40:26
  Hopefully the new owner likes to keep it that way.
• 40:29
  Yeah, because that's the plan for the Roadster is that it's
• 40:33
  cosmetically you're leaving it as it came.
• 40:35
  Out just like that junkyard. There's there are, you know,
• 40:38
  literally 1000 probably perfectly restored 300SL
• 40:42
  roadsters out there. Let's leave this one like it is,
• 40:45
  yeah? Yeah, well, and it's just, it's
• 40:47
  so it has a presence when you see it in person because you
• 40:51
  just go like, OK, tell me all your stories.
• 40:54
  There's so much history here. And just for it to come out.
• 40:57
  Of I mean, we, we have pictures of it in Miami and there's bird
• 41:00
  poop on the side of the car and here it is on the lawn at, at MO
• 41:04
  to Miami. And, and we've, you know, we, it
• 41:07
  just, it's so cool to see it that way.
• 41:08
  And then like, we didn't even clean the windshield.
• 41:11
  Like we left the windshield dirty.
• 41:13
  And then we had, we were at the track and we finally gave up
• 41:16
  because we couldn't see anything.
• 41:17
  So we're like, we like rub a hole, like made a circular hole
• 41:20
  so you can see through the middle of it.
• 41:22
  And so the first time, I mean, literally the first time the
• 41:25
  windshield had been cleaned since probably the 80s or 70s
• 41:29
  was at the racetrack in Miami and, and, and with the
• 41:33
  journalist there. And they, they loved it.
• 41:35
  They thought it was so cool. And they, the cool part was they
• 41:37
  got to drive with the 300 SLR from, you know, Sterling Moss
• 41:43
  and, and Jenkins and those guys and, and Hans Herman and Fangio.
• 41:48
  So they got to ride in that. They got to ride in a SLRSLR
• 41:52
  Sterling Moss edition and then that.
• 41:55
  So that was a surprise that we didn't tell them they were
• 41:57
  getting a chance to drive that that's.
• 41:59
  Very. That's really cool.
• 42:01
  You mentioned Hoovi, you mentioned a gull wing.
• 42:03
  How did this whole thing come together, Tyler buying this car,
• 42:07
  bringing it to you? Because like I mentioned before,
• 42:09
  I think this was really the first time a lot of people had
• 42:13
  seen into the classic center right.
• 42:16
  And you played a large part. You were wonderful.
• 42:19
  You played a starring role. So how'd that all come to be?
• 42:22
  He came to you. Why did you decide to to do
• 42:27
  this? I guess too?
• 42:28
  Because this was a request actually.
• 42:31
  So he had met some of our, our, our colleagues in Germany.
• 42:34
  Actually, they invited him to come do the melee with them a
• 42:39
  couple years ago. And so we we had him on the
• 42:43
  Emilia with us and and he got to drive one of our shop shop goal
• 42:46
  wings and it's a car that he always wanted and it that was
• 42:49
  for him and it was a great, I think I'm the last installment
• 42:52
  that he did. He goes and sees Jay Leno first
• 42:55
  and then he goes to interview Doug Demiro and they play back
• 42:59
  from I don't know how many years ago it was where Tyler was like,
• 43:02
  Hey, this is the car that this is my dream car is to be to have
• 43:05
  a goal wing. And so he had just worked its
• 43:08
  way through to the point where he was able to move some stuff
• 43:11
  around and financially be able to do this.
• 43:14
  And so he found a car and he probably found the lowest priced
• 43:20
  best condition going I have seen in 100.
• 43:24
  It just we've looked at hundreds of cars and this one he lucked
• 43:27
  out. I mean, he just got a smoking
• 43:29
  deal on it, which is great. And so, so our colleagues in
• 43:33
  Germany said, look, you know, Tyler bought this car and we've
• 43:37
  got the 300 SL Classic. So that's that's an event that
• 43:40
  we sponsor, that's done and it's it's a 300SL and SLS event, a
• 43:46
  driving event. And we do it in a different
• 43:48
  place every year. So we've done Moab, we've done,
• 43:52
  we did Arizona, we did Colorado and New Mexico.
• 43:56
  And this year we did it in Park City, UT and it's a great
• 44:00
  thousand mile, usually about 1000 mile rally.
• 44:03
  We've done it, we did in Tahoe as well, which was a really
• 44:06
  beautiful place to do that. And so he's like, you know, he'd
• 44:10
  like to do this event, but that gives you like, you know, again,
• 44:15
  35 days or something to get this car ready to go.
• 44:18
  So it's like, Oh, you guys always give me the most fun
• 44:21
  deadlines to to reach. And so we we worked it out and
• 44:25
  and we're able to bring the car into the classic center And we
• 44:28
  did the first video was like kind of an inspection.
• 44:30
  It's a four part series. So the first one's kind of like
• 44:33
  here's the car, we inspected it, we talked about what its needs
• 44:36
  were. And the second one was like, OK,
• 44:39
  we've got the go ahead. And now let's, let's get, you
• 44:42
  know, mechanically through it and, and fix all this stuff
• 44:44
  that's, that needs to be done. And then the, the third
• 44:47
  installment was we, we took it to Park City and we drove it and
• 44:51
  he drove it with April on the 300 or so classic.
• 44:54
  And then the 4th installment, which is the one that just came
• 44:56
  out recently, was he drove it to Jay Leno's garage and had Jay
• 45:01
  drive it and critique it. And, and he said, you know, you
• 45:05
  did a great job buying this car and, and, you know, well done,
• 45:08
  well bought in that case. And, and then he was able to
• 45:11
  take it down to Doug Demiro and, and have him take a look at it
• 45:15
  and, and chat about it. So it was a really fun
• 45:17
  adventure, I think for him to, to see that.
• 45:19
  And, and for the viewers that, you know, if you haven't seen
• 45:22
  it, I encourage you go to go to Tyler's for, for Hooby's garage
• 45:25
  and, and check it out because you really get a chance to see
• 45:29
  what we do kind of in the background.
• 45:31
  We have like we, the injection pump was, was in bad shape and
• 45:35
  we needed to test it. So we have all the equipment.
• 45:37
  We have an original Bosch test stand here where we can run the
• 45:40
  injection pumps and we can test them and do all that.
• 45:43
  And so we had our our one of our staff members who looks like
• 45:49
  straight out of Breaking Bad. He looks like.
• 45:53
  What's the main character? Walter White.
• 45:55
  Walter White, He looks just like Walter White.
• 45:57
  Like we didn't realize that when we hired him, but so somebody
• 46:01
  said it's been pointed. Out to you a time or two.
• 46:04
  What's that? It's been pointed out to you a
• 46:06
  time or two. Now it has Yeah.
• 46:08
  And he, what was funny is he we had Aaron Paul was one of our,
• 46:11
  you know, kind of one of our brand ambassadors.
• 46:13
  But we had him at Pebble Beach and he has a picture with Chris.
• 46:17
  Who's the guy that looks like Walter?
• 46:18
  White. And one of the comments on the
• 46:20
  YouTube page was like, it's nice to see the Walter is like, you
• 46:23
  know, finding work after all this that happened.
• 46:25
  And he's rebuilding injection pumps at the classic Center for
• 46:29
  Mercedes. I thought that was really great.
• 46:30
  That's. Quite fun.
• 46:31
  Can all rest easy that he's found his tough place to land.
• 46:35
  Yeah. So, you know, it gives a chance
• 46:37
  for people to see like our paint shop and what we do.
• 46:39
  We had to paint the gas tank and, and fix that stuff and talk
• 46:42
  about, talk about some of the challenges with working on these
• 46:45
  cars. And, you know, for this
• 46:46
  particular one, it's, it really is about, you know, how
• 46:49
  expensive some of these parts are.
• 46:51
  And, and when things go bad, they're the most embarrassing
• 46:54
  thing probably for Tyler was he left the parking brake on for
• 46:56
  about 20 miles and the damage was about $14,000 in damage from
• 47:03
  doing that. Smoke the drums.
• 47:04
  Smoke the drums, cook the paint off.
• 47:07
  And I mean, Michael, you know, you've, you've been on the
• 47:09
  ground with us and, and Ryan with us.
• 47:11
  And it, they do it like people don't think about this lever,
• 47:15
  you know, because in water and car there's a light that goes
• 47:18
  off and there's a siren and it's, you know, there's a whole
• 47:20
  thing that happens where in an old car, there's no, it's you,
• 47:24
  you, you have to remember to take the parking brake off.
• 47:26
  That car show is brought to you by Sheffield Watches.
• 47:29
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  sheffieldwatches.com? Give them a follow on the Gram
• 48:05
  at Sheffield Under Score all Sport Under Score watches and
• 48:08
  tell them that car show sent you.
• 48:11
  One of the better stories I have about Nate is is we, we have the
• 48:15
  pleasure on the Colorado grand of having quite a few 300 SLS
• 48:18
  that Nate has the the the laborious task of keeping up and
• 48:22
  running. Some are three Mercedes, some
• 48:24
  are cut, you know, just private entrance cars.
• 48:27
  But I cannot tell you how many times we'll be together either
• 48:29
  late at night or early in the morning or even midday.
• 48:32
  And he'll get a call from a, you know, a frantic person who had
• 48:35
  stopped at a coffee stop or a lunch or whatever.
• 48:38
  And he's like, my car won't start.
• 48:39
  My car won't start. What do I do?
• 48:40
  What I do? And I'd say what, Nate, 40 to
• 48:44
  50% of the times, like did you turn on the fuel pump?
• 48:47
  What fuel pump? Yeah, yeah, what fuel?
• 48:49
  What, what, what for the fuel pump?
• 48:50
  What what not for the fuel pump. And like, you know, it's it's
• 48:52
  the one that's been there the whole time.
• 48:54
  So he's fixed so many cars just over a phone call because the
• 48:58
  customers love the cars. They they are passionate about
• 49:00
  the cars, but they don't always know the cars.
• 49:03
  And that that's a testament to, you know, Nate's knowledge and
• 49:07
  and the Mercedes-Benz Classic Centers support of everybody
• 49:11
  just wanting to continue to enjoy these things.
• 49:13
  But yeah, you know, you worked. You worked miracles over the
• 49:16
  phone. So you know, the, the, the
• 49:19
  number one thing that happens with these cars at, at these
• 49:22
  events is, you know, the gas cap is this big, like 4 inch
• 49:24
  diameter piece. And they'll take it off and
• 49:27
  they'll put it on top of the gas pump.
• 49:29
  They'll fill up and then they drive away and they're like, it
• 49:32
  smells like gas inside my car. And you're like, well, you lift
• 49:35
  the gas cap back there and by the way, you know, it's, you
• 49:37
  know, the original gas cap, which is hard to find.
• 49:40
  But so we always have, you know, we have a lot of spares in the
• 49:43
  truck and I always like, here you go.
• 49:44
  Here's the spare gas cap and we'll get you home.
• 49:47
  And, and it's after doing it and I've done the 20, I've done the
• 49:50
  Colorado Grand now like 21 or 22 times, I forget.
• 49:53
  And it's sort of the same, like you said, Michael, it's like the
• 49:56
  same thing every time. Like you didn't, you know, he's
• 49:59
  driven the car one time, right? Or, or whatever.
• 50:02
  And, but the, probably my, my least favorite story in that
• 50:06
  regard was there's these two 2 girls and it was the whole
• 50:09
  family was on the Colorado Grand.
• 50:11
  It was like mom, dad and these two, they're the two daughters
• 50:13
  and they're really sweet and they're great.
• 50:15
  And they're driving a 300SL Roadster, which I think they
• 50:18
  were probably in their mid 20s at the time.
• 50:21
  I'm like, well, that's a pretty nice car to drive, you know, in
• 50:23
  your, in your 20s to do do something like that.
• 50:26
  And they're driving along and they're stopped on the side of
• 50:28
  the road. So of course, you know, we pull
• 50:29
  over and we check on them and see how they're doing.
• 50:32
  And I was like, they're like, something's wrong.
• 50:34
  It's making a strange noise. And you know, you, you, you turn
• 50:38
  it over and you crank it over and I'm like the connecting rods
• 50:40
  hanging out of the side of the block.
• 50:42
  Like it's done, like it's over. And like you can imagine there's
• 50:45
  this like, you know, 20 something year old girl to go to
• 50:48
  your dad and be like, hey, I blew the engine up on the
• 50:50
  roadster. So those are the things where
• 50:53
  you're just like, it's a really bad day when when stuff like
• 50:56
  that happens. But, you know, that's why we're
• 50:57
  here to help help people, you know, get them back on the.
• 50:59
  Road anybody? Did you guys start reproducing
• 51:02
  the the damn lifting pucks Like how how has somebody not filled
• 51:06
  that gap and charged $3000 for those the the Jack points?
• 51:10
  No, the Jack points the. Lifting the lifting Well, the
• 51:14
  the tricky part about that is you start getting into product
• 51:17
  liability issues because like if I make something and I sell it
• 51:21
  that you use to Jack it up and then it falls on you.
• 51:23
  I've got a serious problem now with.
• 51:25
  Product liability. Lindsay.
• 51:26
  Lindsay, there's a, there's specific in the toolkit.
• 51:30
  Mercedes. Yeah, there was a, it's
• 51:32
  basically just a puck with a, with a square tubing piece that
• 51:35
  slides in and that's what you lift the car up, you Jack it up
• 51:38
  on. The problem is if you don't have
• 51:40
  that, you, it's damn near impossible to Jack the thing up,
• 51:42
  especially on a roadside with a flat tire.
• 51:44
  So that becomes the the Holy Grail of what gets passed around
• 51:49
  for a week. And I'm sure it's, I can't
• 51:51
  imagine what it's like on the classic of like, does anybody
• 51:54
  have a puck? Because you can't get the car up
• 51:56
  and and do anything with it if you don't have that.
• 52:00
  So I'm just surprised that someone hasn't, you know, laser.
• 52:03
  Well, I don't. Know people that are like making
• 52:05
  stuff like that to to be able to do it but yeah, there's certain
• 52:08
  things like in unless it's something that was sold
• 52:11
  originally and we have like drawings for it, we can't really
• 52:15
  sell things that we've we're sort of invented it gets tricky
• 52:17
  so. Yeah, I can appreciate that.
• 52:19
  Well, that that's, that's that's the $1,000,000 idea.
• 52:22
  It's just welding together aluminum.
• 52:24
  Aluminum lifting jacks. Well, and that, I mean, that
• 52:28
  reminds me, and I was going to mention this in the episode, but
• 52:31
  what is the room that you have at the classic center?
• 52:33
  Because the one thing when after I left that I kept going back to
• 52:36
  was it has several vintage machines.
• 52:39
  And I think it's the, it's all of the records of all the specs
• 52:44
  of all the different vintage vehicles.
• 52:47
  Yeah. So was it like a bunch of filing
• 52:48
  cabinets? I.
• 52:49
  Was going to say filing cabinets, yeah.
• 52:52
  Yeah. So those are actually physical
• 52:53
  paper data cards, the originals. OK.
• 52:56
  That's what I was wondering when you were talking about the data
• 52:58
  cards. I'm like, I think that's what it
• 52:59
  was, but it was like, did all different manufacturers?
• 53:04
  Am I remembering this? Correctly, No.
• 53:05
  All Mercedes. All Mercedes.
• 53:06
  So actually I'm thinking, I'm trying to remember what it was
• 53:12
  that we talked, what I showed you.
• 53:14
  I'm kind of retracing where we went in the shop.
• 53:16
  I know, me too. That's worth.
• 53:17
  It yeah, it's a year. A year goes by fast, so.
• 53:21
  Yeah, I can't believe it's already been a year.
• 53:23
  Well, and then when you mentioned the CLK GTR sometimes
• 53:26
  being in the shops. It was like.
• 53:28
  It was there when I was there. It's amazing.
• 53:30
  It's. Actually changed hands again so.
• 53:32
  Really. Yeah, Yeah, I think I remember
• 53:36
  talking about the hydraulic lifting and I think you were
• 53:39
  checking something on it and we were marveling it, I think where
• 53:43
  the gas tank filler. Is, oh, the little flap.
• 53:46
  You open the flap and it's like inside that thing, yeah.
• 53:49
  Yeah, and the width of the door sills you know to get in.
• 53:53
  Over those, Yeah. It's so like, the three of us
• 53:57
  fit in that car, but Ryan doesn't fit in that car.
• 54:00
  No, there's no way. Like, no way.
• 54:02
  Did you guys do any? Was there any conversation?
• 54:05
  Because I don't think you and I have ever talked about this.
• 54:07
  The building that you're in, right?
• 54:09
  It's got, you know, it's an old airplane assembly and it's got
• 54:13
  ADC jet. It's got the cause.
• 54:16
  And Nate will know this. Lindsay, maybe you saw it as you
• 54:18
  traversed back and forth, but that was a derelict building
• 54:22
  before Mercedes Classic moved back into it.
• 54:24
  And the the neon sign that sits above the building is so
• 54:28
  beautiful. And it was like it was in, you
• 54:31
  know, in disrepair. And you guys, I give you a lot
• 54:33
  of credit for for vitalizing that because it's such a
• 54:36
  beautiful piece of Americana. Did they tell you anything about
• 54:40
  that building or kind of like what was built in there or any
• 54:44
  kind of back story on it where you're sitting?
• 54:46
  Now, so I mean, I'm a super nerd, so like, I want to know
• 54:49
  every history thing about everything.
• 54:51
  That's why there's all of this in the background, so.
• 54:56
  But yeah, so it was built in 57 to build the mainly the DC-8,
• 55:02
  which was the four inch and competitor to the Boeing 7 O 7,
• 55:05
  which is the famous, you know, kind of like the first, the
• 55:08
  first airplane that you could really travel like, hey, we're
• 55:10
  going to fly from, you know, LA to New York, direct to New York
• 55:13
  to Paris and all over the place. So that was the competitor to
• 55:17
  it. And then they started building
• 55:18
  the, the narrow body 2 engine planes in in on this side of the
• 55:22
  building. And so it's, it's, I've
• 55:25
  researched like all this cool stuff and there's tunnels
• 55:28
  underneath Lakewood Blvd. that they would drive trucks with
• 55:31
  trailers with the parts and they would go from one side to the
• 55:34
  other side. It was really cool.
• 55:36
  So you're talking? Big, full size, like, you know,
• 55:38
  big trucks. Yeah, so there's actually, the
• 55:41
  tunnels are still there, but they're blocked off when you get
• 55:43
  to the other side of Lakewood. And so it's, it's really cool
• 55:47
  like to kind of hunt around. And there's, there's old
• 55:50
  remnants that we still find of the Boeing and, and McDonnell
• 55:53
  Douglas days. Like we found they're like on
• 55:56
  the floor. They'll be like I found the
• 55:58
  other day, it says Boeing 717 stairs.
• 56:02
  Like it's just that's the location where they would store
• 56:05
  them before they assembled the planes on, on site.
• 56:08
  And, you know, I tell people like we give tours and we talked
• 56:11
  about, I mean, 35,000 people worked here every day in this
• 56:15
  facility. And and the facility across the
• 56:16
  street is, you know, it's a major hub of production for
• 56:19
  aircraft was right here in Long Beach.
• 56:21
  And but the sign, the sign is awesome.
• 56:23
  And that's actually a Nash. That's a historical landmark for
• 56:26
  the city of Long Beach. And it can never be destroyed.
• 56:30
  If if anything, if it ever got moved, we are taken down.
• 56:33
  They would probably move it someplace else.
• 56:35
  But we love it. It's cool when you land in Long
• 56:37
  Beach, you're like eye level with this huge, you know, fly DC
• 56:41
  jets sign. It's all neon and and it's
• 56:44
  actually managed by the the landlord that owns this
• 56:47
  property. And if there's one piece of neon
• 56:50
  out, the neighbors are like, you know, calling what's the deal
• 56:53
  with the sign? Like why is the why is the
• 56:55
  little arrow gone or whatever the the D is half burned out or
• 56:58
  something. So.
• 57:00
  But you can't take, you can't take away what you guys did
• 57:02
  because that sign was derelict before you guys occupied that
• 57:05
  building. And so, yeah, choosing that
• 57:07
  whole space. Yeah.
• 57:09
  And this whole area now, you know, we were kind of the first
• 57:12
  ones here and then, you know, we knew it was everything was going
• 57:16
  to be fine when they built a Whole Foods in an in and out
• 57:19
  across the street. So it's like we're fine.
• 57:21
  It's, you know, it's not an industrial area anymore.
• 57:24
  And and this, this area of Long Beach is really quite nice.
• 57:26
  They've got it, they've figured it out, getting it fixed up.
• 57:30
  And we've got Rocket Labs is right down the street, a lot of
• 57:34
  that stuff. But on the sad part of it, the
• 57:37
  MD 11 that crashed, the UPS flight that crashed two weeks
• 57:40
  ago, yeah, in this building. So on the other side of our
• 57:45
  building, all those planes were built right here, so.
• 57:48
  Yeah, people forget how much of a manufacturing hub Los Angeles
• 57:52
  was back in the day, right? They look at it now, it's smog
• 57:55
  ridden, it's it's traffic, whatever.
• 57:56
  But you had all of the planes being built in Long Beach.
• 57:59
  You had all of what YouTube and Google occupies now in Mar Vista
• 58:04
  was aircraft production, old Hughes Airline.
• 58:07
  The Spruce Goose is The Spruce Goose was built in a in a hangar
• 58:12
  that Google Now occupies and it's the largest indoor space
• 58:16
  like I think in America. I could be misquoting, that's
• 58:18
  someone in the comments. Downey.
• 58:19
  All the space shuttles were built with North American
• 58:22
  aviation in Downey and in like Lancaster area.
• 58:27
  All of the the Apollo capsules were built in Downey.
• 58:30
  All the third stage stuff was built in Seal Beach.
• 58:35
  The what was that? The other ones, C-17, that was
• 58:39
  the last plane was built here in Long Beach on the other side of
• 58:42
  the airport. That's that huge cargo transport
• 58:44
  for. The that they still use, they're
• 58:45
  still in use. It's still in use.
• 58:47
  They don't make them anymore, but occasionally one will fly
• 58:49
  around. We'll see one land every once in
• 58:51
  a while for some reason. So, yeah, it's, it was a huge
• 58:54
  hub for that. And, and it made sense for us to
• 58:56
  build, to be here. And you know, we're our, our CEO
• 59:01
  announced this, the road to 400,000.
• 59:03
  So our goal is to sell 400,000 vehicles next year.
• 59:06
  And we're going to need every square foot of this place to
• 59:09
  push out that many cars, a lot of cars.
• 59:12
  So wow. The other the other fun fact is
• 59:14
  when what is it just half the building that is AUS port that
• 59:18
  you have to if you if you drive in the wrong side of it, they
• 59:21
  they will stop you promptly because you're not.
• 59:23
  I mean, it's, it's it's own little micro capsule inside of
• 59:27
  Long Beach Airport, which you don't want to go in the wrong
• 59:29
  gate. Little little.
• 59:30
  Free trade zone spot. So it's like you're in the US,
• 59:34
  but you're in this little La La land taxation only speaking.
• 59:38
  That car show is proud to partner with Drake Motor Cars.
• 59:42
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  know you heard about them on that car show.
• 1:00:21
  No. Well, Ryan, Speaking of crystal
• 1:00:23
  balls, Ryan has a looking into the future question, so let's
• 1:00:26
  hit it. Yeah, I'm just greedy.
• 1:00:28
  Maybe, but I I want to know what we should be buying now.
• 1:00:31
  Right. They said not to buy the C230
• 1:00:33
  because of the plastic, the clip, no interior plastic just
• 1:00:36
  like hell. So I was I I talked to a Pebble.
• 1:00:39
  I was telling him I was looking at a a Japanese market wagon,
• 1:00:43
  right hand drive wagon and they only wanted like 8 grand or 9
• 1:00:46
  grand for it here in town. And and he's like, oh, you'll
• 1:00:48
  never find the plastic and the interior pieces will fall apart.
• 1:00:52
  He goes like pass. Well, I think, you know, if from
• 1:00:57
  my, from my, you know, spokesperson for Mercedes today
• 1:01:00
  had, it's like they're all precious babies and they're all
• 1:01:03
  worth saving. But we know it's not possible to
• 1:01:06
  just, I mean, because the number, sheer number of cars
• 1:01:08
  that we have, it's like trying to pick out the really the, the
• 1:01:11
  cream of the crop and the ones to buy.
• 1:01:12
  I, I think a lot of the, the sort of unusual and unique.
• 1:01:17
  And we talked about the Silver Arrow edition R129's.
• 1:01:20
  Those are really, you know, quite popular and they're still
• 1:01:22
  affordable classics. Like people can, can find those
• 1:01:24
  on bring a trailer or, you know, cars and biz, whatever you can
• 1:01:27
  find. You know, the, the early AMG
• 1:01:31
  cars are interesting and they're they're big dollars now, but
• 1:01:35
  again, the support level of that, because it was a separate
• 1:01:38
  company up until 1993. You know, it's difficult for us
• 1:01:42
  to manage that because it was, you know, those were pre pre
• 1:01:45
  merger days with AMG and and, and Mercedes-Benz.
• 1:01:48
  So we've got a little bit of difficulty there.
• 1:01:51
  SLR certainly are coming, coming around.
• 1:01:54
  You know, the, the price is softened on some of the, you
• 1:01:57
  know, like pagodas and things like that.
• 1:02:00
  A little have come down a little bit.
• 1:02:01
  They for a while we were doing them 250 three, $150,000 for a
• 1:02:05
  pagoda, full, full restoration everything.
• 1:02:08
  And, and, but you can actually buy quite a bit of those things
• 1:02:11
  now relatively inexpensively. I think A560SL for somebody just
• 1:02:17
  starting out in this world and wants to get into something
• 1:02:20
  interesting and convertible. I mean, you can buy a 560SL for,
• 1:02:24
  you know, what's a, what's a medium priced sedan cost
• 1:02:28
  nowadays? It's it's a lot of car for the
• 1:02:30
  money what you're getting and with, you know, having a hard
• 1:02:33
  top soft top combo is kind of a, a cool way to do it.
• 1:02:37
  You know, the I think the ones to look at are also black series
• 1:02:40
  cars. So you know, we got CLKDT, we
• 1:02:44
  got the CLK black series was the first one we got.
• 1:02:46
  Europe got an SLK 55 AMG black series.
• 1:02:51
  We never got that one. That's the only one we didn't
• 1:02:53
  get. And then you've got the C coupe
• 1:02:56
  black series, the SL65 Black series, which is probably my
• 1:02:59
  favorite of those, you know, all the way up into the current
• 1:03:02
  generation stuff. So I think those are something
• 1:03:05
  to look for. You know, we always say the 500
• 1:03:06
  E is one of the all time favorites from a future
• 1:03:09
  collectible. You know the Evo 2 now is really
• 1:03:13
  huge money. Big money.
• 1:03:15
  But the 190 E, the two the the regular 2316, I owned one and
• 1:03:20
  it's probably my favorite driving car I've ever owned.
• 1:03:22
  It's the most stable platform. You know, there's that, that
• 1:03:27
  race series that they did in Germany when the Nurburg ring
• 1:03:29
  reopened, I was at 85 or 86, I forget the year that they opened
• 1:03:34
  it. And this little guy named Senna
• 1:03:36
  just blew the doors off of everybody in this little, you
• 1:03:39
  know, 2/5/16. And so there, it's a great car
• 1:03:43
  and, and it's very capable to, to do the work yourself and, and
• 1:03:48
  continue to work on it, brakes and suspension, that sort of
• 1:03:51
  thing. It's relatively simple.
• 1:03:54
  So I think those are things that are really gonna be interesting
• 1:03:57
  in the future. True.
• 1:03:58
  My latest kick is I want a vintage G.
• 1:04:00
  That's what I want like. We all do.
• 1:04:03
  Yeah, we all do. So yeah, like a Europa era,
• 1:04:07
  yeah. You know, actually older you
• 1:04:10
  have you you had a older what were you working on the the I'm
• 1:04:14
  misremembering, but the big. Oh, so I have the weirdest
• 1:04:18
  vintage Mercedes in all of America right now.
• 1:04:21
  Right. So I have a 1956 Mercedes-Benz
• 1:04:24
  L312, which is a four and a half ton truck.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah, it looks like a giant ponton.
• 1:04:31
  So it's, you know, this this quite large.
• 1:04:35
  It was. And I have the only one that was
• 1:04:37
  ever delivered to the United States.
• 1:04:39
  Really. So it's AUS version.
• 1:04:41
  It's got US lights and instruments and we think it was
• 1:04:44
  the factory demonstrator and they were judging whether they
• 1:04:46
  wanted to bring trucks to the US market.
• 1:04:49
  And it was used in in Orange County, in LA, it's entire life.
• 1:04:53
  It's never left LA or Orange County.
• 1:04:57
  How did you find it the? Guy in Sierra Madre actually, Oh
• 1:05:01
  my gosh. And he it was used on a farm in
• 1:05:09
  Buena Park next to So it was the farm next to Knott's Berry Farm.
• 1:05:12
  What would have? I'm going to say.
• 1:05:14
  And so the guys that, that the family that lived there, they
• 1:05:17
  owned this truck, they're Lubeckman family and they used
• 1:05:21
  it to haul machinery and things like that.
• 1:05:23
  And, and I even have a picture of it at the farm in like 1965
• 1:05:27
  when it was, you know, at that point it was like 10 years old.
• 1:05:30
  And so I'm doing a like Concord level restoration on this thing,
• 1:05:34
  which is insane to do. But I mean, it's just
• 1:05:37
  everything's huge on it. And it's, it's kind of like
• 1:05:39
  working on a Unimog. Like that size of vehicle.
• 1:05:42
  It's 20, I think it's 26 feet long.
• 1:05:45
  And, you know, fully loaded, it's it'll, I think gross is
• 1:05:49
  like 30,000 lbs. It'll haul with a trailer and
• 1:05:51
  everything. So it's pretty big.
• 1:05:53
  So that's my weird, weird project that I'm working on,
• 1:05:56
  Huh? That's so that we've all seen
• 1:05:57
  that, that Ben's transporter, right, full of like, you know,
• 1:06:01
  is this that look, is this the same sort of.
• 1:06:04
  Same era and they actually used these on the race team in 55,
• 1:06:09
  obviously for, for the Grand Prix and for sports car racing
• 1:06:13
  and the I, they had some of them set up as like mobile machine
• 1:06:16
  shops. We have a picture of one of
• 1:06:18
  these trucks that, I mean, you can stand up inside of it.
• 1:06:20
  It's big enough and there's a lathe, a mill, a drill press and
• 1:06:24
  a bandsaw in the back of this thing.
• 1:06:26
  And it's like, you can imagine like going to a Formula One race
• 1:06:30
  now. And we're like, Oh yeah, we
• 1:06:32
  brought a A5 axis CNC machine that weighs 250,000 lbs.
• 1:06:37
  We, we brought it with us to, you know, Dubai or whatever
• 1:06:39
  it's, you know, that would be the kind of the right.
• 1:06:42
  We never know what we need, but the, the rent transporter is, is
• 1:06:45
  an interesting piece. So the original is destroyed.
• 1:06:48
  It, it's gone it it's kind of sat out behind the race shops
• 1:06:51
  for a few years and I think it just kind of rusted into the
• 1:06:54
  ground. You know, it's probably went
• 1:06:55
  through some harsh winters in Germany and, and that was the
• 1:06:57
  end of it. And so it was 300 SL powered and
• 1:07:01
  it was built off of a 300 Adenauer chassis.
• 1:07:04
  And the idea was it was not really used necessarily to get
• 1:07:08
  to the race. The idea was, let's say you're
• 1:07:11
  at R.E.M.'s in France and you need to get
• 1:07:14
  that car back to the to the Stuttgart shops and get it fixed
• 1:07:18
  and get it back to the to the track overnight.
• 1:07:21
  How could you do that? Well, if you can do 105 mph,
• 1:07:26
  which is what it was rated for fully loaded, then you could get
• 1:07:29
  there and back pretty quick. It's not that far away in the
• 1:07:32
  miles an hour. So that was the whole reason
• 1:07:34
  they built. It.
• 1:07:36
  Yeah, I didn't know that. Did you guys know that?
• 1:07:38
  I did. Not that's.
• 1:07:40
  Amazing. And so the one that the one that
• 1:07:43
  Jay has actually was the first one that I think we started
• 1:07:46
  working on to build a replica of it because we didn't that was
• 1:07:50
  like one of the pieces we didn't have in our collection as a
• 1:07:53
  company. And so it was being built, but
• 1:07:56
  it didn't go the direction that they necessarily wanted to do.
• 1:07:58
  And so they decided to go and build it more like the original
• 1:08:02
  because the one that Jay has is built on a different type of
• 1:08:04
  chassis. And I think it has a diesel
• 1:08:07
  engine, if I'm not mistaken. And so Mercedes actually built a
• 1:08:10
  fully functional 1. And I think we have two now, if
• 1:08:14
  I'm not mistaken, one that sits in the museum on display.
• 1:08:17
  And then we have one that runs and they, they actually took it
• 1:08:19
  up the hill at Goodwood last year.
• 1:08:21
  And I'm like, that's the perfect, they had AW196 on the
• 1:08:24
  back of it. So there's a let's see,
• 1:08:27
  35,000,000 dollar $40 million. Car in the back, right?
• 1:08:32
  So this. Is why Mercedes-Benz rules,
• 1:08:34
  right? I mean this is this.
• 1:08:36
  Is we have 3540 million the only reasonable answer?
• 1:08:38
  Blast up the hill. Come on.
• 1:08:40
  That's right, we love it. Beans.
• 1:08:42
  Well, Nate, this is amazing. Obviously we could probably talk
• 1:08:45
  to you for six more hours with all the stories and all the
• 1:08:47
  different cars. So we would love to have you
• 1:08:50
  come back. But for now, what is next at the
• 1:08:54
  center? Because obviously you do have
• 1:08:56
  that beautiful museum area in the front too.
• 1:08:58
  And so, well, if people come to visit, like what?
• 1:09:02
  Yeah, so the, the main workshop area is closed to the public
• 1:09:06
  generally, you know, when we're working for safety reasons
• 1:09:10
  mainly. But what's cool is we built it
• 1:09:12
  in such a way that you can actually come and see and look
• 1:09:14
  into the windows and see what's going on at the workshop on any
• 1:09:18
  given day. And so we're open Monday through
• 1:09:20
  Friday, 8:00 to 4:00. We're right at the Long Beach
• 1:09:23
  Airport on Lakewood Blvd. 3860 N Lakewood Blvd. in Long Beach.
• 1:09:27
  And you're more than welcome to come by.
• 1:09:29
  We have a series of cars on display.
• 1:09:31
  We've got a PC 23, the IndyCar, the beast we have the the very
• 1:09:35
  first beast is here. We have that car right now.
• 1:09:38
  We have the Jurassic Park M class from the second Jurassic
• 1:09:42
  Park movie. It has a little inflatable
• 1:09:45
  dinosaur inside that we've nicknamed Mini Mike.
• 1:09:47
  Camera car or what? Was it so it's?
• 1:09:49
  Actually the fifth prototype ML ever built.
• 1:09:52
  So it's built, Mercedes supplied for the production, right?
• 1:09:56
  Because this was built just. So yeah, yeah, this one was
• 1:09:59
  actually built in. Grots, I believe in Austria at.
• 1:10:02
  The G class production shops and then they moved it to the United
• 1:10:05
  States when they so this thing could be hand built it is it's
• 1:10:08
  the most. Bizarre prototype you've ever
• 1:10:10
  seen, but. What they needed camera cars for
• 1:10:13
  the movie. And so this was one of the stars
• 1:10:16
  of the of the movie is this actual car.
• 1:10:19
  And so it has holes in the side of it where they would put like
• 1:10:21
  camera rigs. And it had no glass when we got
• 1:10:24
  it. Like it was just a piece of
• 1:10:25
  plexiglass that was like screwed in with like wood screws and,
• 1:10:30
  and so we're we're debating getting it.
• 1:10:32
  Running. But I don't think it has run in
• 1:10:34
  25 years. So it's it's time to to try to
• 1:10:37
  get that going again. We've got some enthusiasts in
• 1:10:39
  the club that that offered to come and help us get it up and
• 1:10:42
  running on their own time. So we maybe take them up on that
• 1:10:45
  offer. But and then we have cars for
• 1:10:46
  sale so people can come and see we've got like an R129 for sale
• 1:10:50
  on the floor all the way up to, you know, fully restored 300
• 1:10:54
  SLS. We have a 180 diesel ponton
• 1:10:58
  that's top speed I believe is like 56 mph.
• 1:11:01
  So if you want to roll coal and roll slow, you can go ahead and
• 1:11:05
  drive A1958180 diesel. You got a kid getting their
• 1:11:09
  driver's license. This is the car for them, right?
• 1:11:12
  This is. Yeah, yeah, this is.
• 1:11:13
  Are you listening? Yeah, this is the car.
• 1:11:15
  For your teenage. You know kid, because.
• 1:11:18
  They're not going fast. I think zero to 60 or well, zero
• 1:11:21
  to 60 is on a table basically, but I think 0 to top speed is 39
• 1:11:27
  or 45 seconds. Wow, perfect.
• 1:11:29
  So yeah, that's, that's the ultimate vehicle.
• 1:11:32
  Yeah. So, yeah, come, come by and see
• 1:11:35
  us. And then our parts departments
• 1:11:36
  open as well. You know, locally here, we, we
• 1:11:38
  stock a lot of stuff. So, you know, if, if you're
• 1:11:41
  working on your project locally and you're like all of a sudden
• 1:11:44
  you, you know, you need a part or something like that, we, we
• 1:11:46
  keep a lot of stuff in stock. And so we're here to to help
• 1:11:49
  with anything that you might need.
• 1:11:52
  Well, and take it from Jay Leno, you guys can find anything,
• 1:11:54
  right? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:11:57
  Everything's available. Everything, including Otto.
• 1:12:01
  Did we mention I was going to say we got to talk about Otto
• 1:12:03
  real quick? Before we leave.
• 1:12:04
  He would be remiss. But let's see if we can get him
• 1:12:07
  up. Come on buddy, we need to talk
• 1:12:09
  about the. Real star of the show, Otto the
• 1:12:10
  Longbow. This is Otto.
• 1:12:12
  We had interviewed me and it's Otto IF.
• 1:12:15
  You come by, I just. Woke him up from.
• 1:12:17
  His 19th hour of sleeping straight.
• 1:12:21
  And so he he's he's here every day.
• 1:12:24
  He's our shop dog. So if he's not asleep, he'll be
• 1:12:28
  out hanging out with the cars. And and so you might come say hi
• 1:12:31
  to him and you can follow him on Instagram at at auto the long
• 1:12:35
  boy, Otto the long boy and I post some pictures of him with
• 1:12:40
  the 300 SLS and driving around and having a good time.
• 1:12:44
  So he's kind of our little mascot around here.
• 1:12:48
  So he is definitely the cutest shop dog and he's a.
• 1:12:52
  Is he a mini long haired dachshund?
• 1:12:54
  Yep, he's a mini long haired shaded cream.
• 1:12:57
  So. He's kind of Blondie dachshund
• 1:13:00
  so and very sleepy at the moment.
• 1:13:02
  He's just and he's just the sweetest and he has had a hard
• 1:13:05
  day at the office. Let's.
• 1:13:06
  Get another hard day. At Mercedes and but yeah, it was
• 1:13:11
  actually. Through through Tyler actually,
• 1:13:13
  for when we shot the video, he just popped into the frame.
• 1:13:16
  He just came in and wanted to be in the show and he ended up
• 1:13:19
  sitting in the back of the gull wing while we drove around and
• 1:13:21
  then we said, well, why don't we take him with us to Park City
• 1:13:24
  and do the rally with him? So he came with us and so he
• 1:13:28
  said Instagram, there's pictures of him on the rally and, and
• 1:13:31
  hanging out with April and and Tyler and Mike and and Michael
• 1:13:36
  Abella from our team in Germany and, and they rode around with
• 1:13:38
  him and he just had a good time. So.
• 1:13:41
  And yeah, so come by, say hi to Otto and he's the best.
• 1:13:46
  I will never forget walking in and seeing him sleeping up on.
• 1:13:49
  Top of the shop counter or just going wait a minute, what's
• 1:13:51
  going on yeah he. There's no corner of.
• 1:13:55
  This place that he hasn't slept on under, you know, he funny
• 1:13:59
  enough. Well, if you take a hardtop like
• 1:14:01
  off of a pagoda and you put it on the floor, he likes to crawl
• 1:14:04
  underneath it and hide inside the hardtop.
• 1:14:07
  So I don't know, it's stocks and stuff as you know, Lindsay with
• 1:14:11
  toxins, I know right there. They Burrow on everything.
• 1:14:14
  So they do. They are.
• 1:14:15
  Born Burrowers. And they just have the funniest.
• 1:14:17
  Person. I mean, so much personality in
• 1:14:19
  these little tiny bodies. Yes, yes, they're very fun.
• 1:14:23
  No one loves riding in. Cars more than.
• 1:14:25
  This dog I can. Promise you that.
• 1:14:27
  So he loves being around cars and in cars and everything.
• 1:14:32
  So it's like his owner. Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  It's like dad. That's right.
• 1:14:35
  You show up for. Nate But you stay for auto.
• 1:14:37
  That's right. Well, Otto's in the right spot,
• 1:14:40
  and he's aptly. Named and.
• 1:14:42
  Truly the star of the show and very fun to follow him on
• 1:14:45
  Instagram. Yeah, Thank you very much.
• 1:14:47
  This is wonderful. Yeah, this was super fun.
• 1:14:49
  Tell us where we. Can find the classic.
• 1:14:52
  Center on Instagram so if people want to follow along so we're at
• 1:14:56
  NB Classic Center and you can. Also, probably most of the of
• 1:15:01
  the stuff that you'll see revolving around our world is at
• 1:15:06
  Mercedes-Benz museum is another one that I would follow because
• 1:15:09
  they'll, they'll show you what's going on all over the world.
• 1:15:12
  So like right now they're doing the the melee in Dubai.
• 1:15:17
  And so Mercedes-Benz is there, we've got the W 196 there and so
• 1:15:21
  you can see some videos and stuff from that.
• 1:15:22
  So yeah, follow us on there and our adventures with the old
• 1:15:27
  classic Mercedes. It's definitely a good follow
• 1:15:31
  and worth a. Visit to the center.
• 1:15:33
  Yeah, but thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:15:36
  This was really fun and I hope to see you in real life before
• 1:15:39
  too long. Yes.
• 1:15:40
  And you're more than welcome if you guys all want to come to
• 1:15:43
  Los. Angeles, we'll shoot an episode
• 1:15:45
  here. Let's do it.
• 1:15:47
  You guys can have an on location or you guys.
• 1:15:49
  Did LA Auto Show so? Next time we're doing it up
• 1:15:52
  here, so even better next live show.
• 1:15:54
  Thank you. Heard it here first.
• 1:15:57
  Well, for all. Of us at that car.
• 1:15:59
  Show and of course, our dear friend Nate.
• 1:16:01
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:16:02
  Remember, always be driving and we'll see you next week.
• 1:16:06
  See you later.