I’ve been meaning to write this one for years actually. Ever since I bought my first Mercedes-Benz. And…trust me…just typing out that phrase “my first Mercedes-Benz” makes me want to do a double-take. Time was I lived in a friend’s basement and mowed lawns and did Manpower temp jobs to make ends meet, and I figured that was pretty much going to be my life. But even a low income kid can dream, and when mine turned to automobiles I always had pretty definite ideas about what a top rank, best of the best, car was.
I grew up in a household without a car. Mom divorced dad when I was 2 and we never had a lot of money. So for the first decade and a half of my life we were carless, and the edges of my childhood world were tied firmly to wherever public transportation and my own two feet could take me. Cars were fascinating, but distant things, like home ownership. I grew up in a series of garden apartments, always near some bus line that could take mom to work and near enough to walk to a small shopping center with a grocery store, a drugstore and a five and dime. It was still a time when most American households had only one car, if they had a car at all. So to be carless wasn’t necessarily considered a sign of poverty and we were not poor…I never went to bed hungry…just very low budget. We would get rides occasionally from neighbors and other church members when necessary, but mostly the weekly shopping trip involved a foldable two wheel grocery cart, something like this…
…which I would pilot, being the man and thereby the muscle in the household. Trips downtown, or to a deluxe shopping center some distance away (there were no malls back then), possibly involving a bus transfer ticket even, were very special occasions, and usually all day affairs the end of which left my little legs very tired. Vacations involved either Trailways, Greyhound or the train. I still vividly remember the magical two vacations we took to Lauderdale By The Sea, Florida, by way of the train. There was a dining car, and a car at the end of the train you could sit in and watch the landscape go by, and the lovely sound of the tracks clicking off the miles to sing me to sleep. It would never have occurred to me that a car was a necessity. A car was a luxury. We got by just fine without one. But oh…how nice to have one! Possibly even as nice as having a house of our very own.
I recall vividly the 1960 Ford Falcon one of the church lady’s had that took us back and forth to Sunday services…
…which would get so hot inside sitting in the sun during church services that even with the windows rolled all the way down by the time it got me back home I felt like a baked cookie. Or the 1959 Rambler Rebel owned by Mr. Rogers, one of the deacons…
…the car that taught me the value of seat belts well before they became mandatory equipment, when my little seven year old face got slammed into its all metal dashboard when Mr. Rogers had to stop suddenly to avoid a drunk driver. I never doubted after that that cars could be dangerous things. But they were magical things, whispering promises to little me of travel to distant places, in a time when my world pretty much ended at reach of mom’s voice.
I think my first glimpse of the 1958 Ford Thunderbird is what really ignited my love affair with the automobile.
I remember I was walking with mom to the local grocery store and one of those things went gliding by on the street and my little jaw dropped. From then on I was all about cars. I used to embarrass mom walking beside her as she shopped, pretending to be driving a car, holding my hands out on an imaginary steering wheel and making all the sound effects. But embarrassing mom is part of a small boy’s job description. Frightening to her, and in retrospect to me later in life, was my habit of peering into the windows of parked cars to admire the dashboards and steering wheels. This was a more Baroque age in American automobilia, and the dashboards and steering wheels of that time are amazing to me even today. They just don’t make them like this anymore…
I would get smacked every so often when mom caught me peering into a parked car, entranced by what I saw, and warned darkly that someday I’d find myself getting snatched away by a stranger. In retrospect it scares me now to think of too. Eventually one Christmas I got a toy that was probably intended to divert my attention away from parked cars…
When you turned the little pot metal ignition key it made a rumbling motor sound. There was a horn, wipers that flicked back and forth, turn signals that blinked, a light switch that illuminated the dials and gauges, and lots of finger candy just like the grownups had on their dashboards. It would be the only car I ever owned whose gas tank I could fill back up just by turning a knob.
I had an uncle who back in those days drove big Oldsmobiles. Probably more then anything else those cars set my childhood notions of what a luxury car was.
A luxury car was a car that was big and magnificent and had all the options, and even a few options you couldn’t get on the other models. Uncle Wayne’s Oldsmobile had Power Windows! No hand cranking in a luxury car…you just pressed a button one way and the window went up…pressed it the opposite way and it went down. What won’t they think of next? It had Power Seats! Oooooh!!! You just pressed a button and the seats moved forward or backward. It was a push button future all right. It had an antenna that automagically extended when you turned on the AM/FM Radio!!! It had two-tone bench seats. It had a light in the glove compartment. It had Air Conditioning!!!! Cool air, really cool air, flowed out of these chrome plated vent balls at either end of the dashboard, and from some chrome plated vents in the middle…
Oh. My. God!!! Our apartment didn’t have Air Conditioning, and here it was in a car no less! No more rolling down the windows in the summertime and waiting outside the car before getting in, until the seats were something less then frying temperature.
Its speedometer had the first progress bar I ever laid eyes on. Instead of a needle that swept across the numbers, it had a green bar that extended from left to right in a horizontal box…
When it got up to highway speeds…40 and over…the green bar was replaced by an orange one. Above 60 it became red.
But the thing that just floored me was the magic button in the middle of the windshield wiper knob. Uncle Wayne showed me one day what it did. He pulled the knob and the wipers started wiping…so much so obvious. Then he pressed the magic button and two little jets of soapy water squirted out onto the window!!!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
It was perfectly clear to me what a luxury car was. A luxury car was a car that had all the options, and maybe even a few options you couldn’t get on the other cars. You certainly weren’t going to get power windows, let alone power seats, on a plain old ordinary everyday Chevy. No. It had to be an Oldsmobile. And if you wanted leather instead of cloth seats, then obviously you would have to step up to a Cadillac.
One day, when I was 16, he came for a visit driving his brand new Mercedes-Benz 220D…
I was…nonplussed. I knew by then that Mercedes-Benz was a German luxury car of some sort, but I had a general disdain for European cars. They were expensive compared to U.S. cars, plain and generally unexciting. And here before my very eyes, was the proof. And…it was a diesel! You didn’t have to know the ‘D’ meant diesel, you knew it the moment he started it up. They’d put a truck engine in a luxury car.
Mind you, by this stage of my life I’d already decided I was a four-door sedan kinda guy. Sports cars didn’t really do much for me, though I admired the engineering that went into them and loved to watch them race. But they weren’t practical for what I wanted to do with a car by that age, which was see the country…just take my maps and my luggage, find some roads I’d never been down before and go. I wanted a car I could drive comfortably in for hours at a time, which you really couldn’t in a low slung, stiff suspensioned sports car, could carry lots of luggage and cargo here and there, could drive my friends anywhere we wanted to go. It had to be a sedan…preferably one with four doors because two doors meant folding down the front seat and squirming your way into the back. I had no money for a car of my own, and not much hope I’d ever have one either. But I had specifications.
This is a luxury car??? I wandered around the Mercedes while my aunt and uncle took their luggage in and chatted with mom. It was small compared to the last Oldsmobile he’d had, and boxy. There wasn’t nearly as much chrome. It had no fins. The front row were two unappealing looking bucket seats. From outside the dashboard looked a bit sparse, the steering wheel somewhat old fashioned. Then my uncle invited me to sit down in it. I opened the passenger side front door and noted the locking mechanism looked very simplistic and odd. I sat down in the bucket seat, closed the door…
…and that was when I realized I was in a whole different world.
This thing is built like a bank vault… I’d never experienced the like of it. Just sitting there I could feel the solidness of it. The seats, made I later learned of the legendary MB-Tex, weren’t soft and cushy like the Olds, but very firm and somehow lots more comfortable in spite of that. And there was absolutely no wiggle in them. They weren’t power seats like the Olds. There was a lever directly in the front and bottom of the seat that you lifted up and then you could move the seat backward or forward. It slide smoothly, and when you snapped it into place the seat locked firmly and would not budge, even a little.
You got used to a slight degree of slop in a car back then. It was normal. A little give, a little wiggle here and there wasn’t a big deal unless it got excessive. A little play in the steering wheel, a little give in the shift lever and turn signals. You knew a car was a mass produced thing and you didn’t expect anything mass produced in those days to be as tight as a watch. Just so it wasn’t so loose it felt like it was about to come apart. Thing was, a little initial looseness usually ended up being a lot of looseness. Things broke down. Lots. And so you took them in for repair. Cars especially in those days, needed lots of repair. But you expected that, just as you expected that a car would not last much further then 50k miles. Odometers back then only had five digits on them. You pushed a car all the way back to the point all the zeros rolled back over…100k…only if you didn’t have the money for a new one, or you were stubborn.
A good car was one that didn’t break down in the first few months of ownership. A great car got you maybe all the way to 50k on just the routine maintenance, and maybe a few minor repairs for things like a knob that fell off or got stuck. By 50k you’d have replaced the brakes several times, and the exhaust pipes and muffler, and the shocks maybe half that. You’d have gone through several sets of tires and multiple tune-ups. That was routine and you bought a car knowing all that was coming. But you also expected at least one or two break downs somewhere along the way. Cars just did that. A lemon was a car that did it every week. A good car maybe only once or twice in 50k miles. Beyond 50k you knew it would give you more trouble then it was worth. So most people traded in at that point for a new one. And so it went. By the time he’d bought that 220D, my uncle had gone through several Oldsmobiles.
And there I was, sitting in a car that Just Felt like uncle Wayne could have driven it clean around the world and it would only just be broken in. I looked over the dashboard, every instrument and knob exactly centered in it’s holder, noticed the odometer had Six Digits on it…and I think I sat there for a few moments with my jaw hanging open nearly catatonic…like Bowman in 2001 sitting in his space pod at the end of his trip down the stargate. Then I was a barrage of questions. How much did it cost? Why a diesel? Is it hard to find diesel fuel? How do you start a diesel? What kind of mileage do you get on Diesel? What’s the maintenance like? Do you need metric tools to work on it?
He explained to me how Mercedes didn’t come out with a new model every year, but instead made little incremental improvements over maybe an eight or ten year run. He told me how if a part showed more wear or breakage then expected it would be redesigned and improved and once the improvement was approved it went right into the production line and no waiting for the next model year. And when you needed a new part you always got the latest most improved one, not an identical to the one that just broke on you part. That was the Mercedes way. He told me that the diesels got way better mileage because diesel fuel had more energy in it by volume, and since a diesel had to be built strong if you took care of one it would last not just 50k but easily hundreds of thousands of miles. He told me about its safety features and how they were building Mercedes-Benz cars with crumple zones back when Detroit was fighting Washington over seat belts. He told me about the cornering and handling capabilities of the car and that they were engineered primarily as safety measures: the best way to handle an accident is to prevent one from happening in the first place. A car that can get its driver out of danger is a safer car. He told me that all the engineering in a Mercedes-Benz was judged against that purpose. Speed and handling weren’t just about speed and handling…they were about safety. German practicality. I felt myself falling in love.
We went for a short ride in the country. I thought I knew how good a sports car was in the curves. I was naive. American sports cars were no damn good in the curve back then. They were big muscle bound V-8 things that would blast you off the road in the straight and get lost in the curve. For an afternoon I sat in a little boxy four door sedan that didn’t accelerate very fast at all, the Oldsmobiles would have laughed at it on the on ramp, but it took the twisty little country back roads we traveled down like it was foreign to no road on earth and just hunkered down and glued itself to the asphalt. It felt like it could have taken the corners at twice the speed my uncle took them. You felt the road under the tires, and the car’s response to it, but not in a scary or discomfortable way. The ride was smooth and serene but not to the point you lost your feel for the road…and that was the thing that stunned me most. I’d never really known before what it was to experience a car that gave you such absolute control before then. A luxury car was supposed to insulate you from the road…make you feel like you were gliding along on a cushion of air! No. I saw it then. A car that takes the feel of the road away from its driver takes their control away too. A great car gives its driver absolute control, moment by moment and that means you have to be able to feel the road under you, and the response of the car to it. The car I was riding in did that…I could feel it even though I was in the passenger seat. It was the first time in my life I’d really experienced that…and it was no sports car. It was a boxy little four door sedan.
Yes, yes…most American luxury car models can take a curve at high speed now and keep you in control. But try to imagine going down a twisty country road in a 1971 Cadillac DeVille and trying to make it take the curves like it was a sports car. No. More like a whale.
That whole day I never once asked my uncle why he bought that boxy little four door sedan. The moment I sat down in it I knew damn well why he bought it. For the next several decades of my life I wanted one too. Some decades later, to my amazement still, I was able to afford one…
…and then…a few years after that…finally…a diesel….
…like the one my uncle drove to visit in, but with forty years of incremental improvements.
In my thirties, broke, doing Manpower temp jobs and mowing lawns to make ends meet, living in a friend’s basement, I never thought I’d own another car again, let alone a new one, let alone a Mercedes-Benz. Luxury. It is not about money. Luxury is better then good enough. At one time in my life a car was something our family considered a luxury. We got by without. And though that was a long time ago, practically in a different America, some folks even now consider cars a luxury item. If you live in the urban zones you can probably get by without one most of the time. But even the new carless urbanites still make use of new ways to rent when they need a car. ZipCar and Car2Go being examples. Owning a car in today’s America might still be considered a luxury in some places. But a car is still more necessity now then it was back when I was a toddler and Washington D.C. still had trolly lines and transcontinental train lines still boasted of their speed and comfort.
Gottlieb Daimler’s motto was “Das Beste oder nichts”, The best or nothing. But what is “best”? If basic transportation will do there is much you can buy nowadays, thanks to the ass kicking Japan gave the rest of the auto making world, that will get you from point A to point B and give you your money’s worth for years and years and then some. My first new car after decades of bare bones living and no prospects was a little Geo Prism and that car was a champion. Under the skin it was a Toyota Corolla and I’d own one again in a heartbeat if I didn’t have the money for the car I do now and I’d be proud of it. It was well made and if you took care of it it would outlast a lot of other makes. I got just over 200k miles out of mine. But if you are lucky and you have it to spend you can reach for something better then basic transportation. That’s luxury. But what is better? What is best?
There’s a scene in Mary Renault’s novel, The Last of the Wine, where the philosopher and teacher Socrates and Alexis, one of his young followers, are walking down a street where the armorers are busy working. They’d been discussing Alexis’ troubles in love and hearing the sound of the armorer’s hammers, Socrates, slyly testing the boy, supposes aloud that now that he is of age he will soon be wanting to buy his first set of armor. Where will you go, he asks. To Pistias, if I can afford his price, says Alexis. “He’s very dear; nine or ten minas for a horseman’s suit.” “So much?”, wonders Socrates aloud. Well surely you’ll get a nice gold device on the breastplate for that kind of money. Not from Pistias, says Alexis, he wouldn’t touch that if you gave him twelve. Kephalos, says Socrates, will give you something to catch the eye. Well but Socrates, says Alexis, I might need to fight in it.
That. A Cadillac or a Lincoln is expensive because it has all the options…all the nice gold devices you can’t get on a Chevy or a Ford…and because the job of a Cadillac or a Lincoln is to tell the world you have a lot of money to spend. Under the skin, a Cadillac is a Chevy and there is no reason other then the marque to not give a Chevy all the options a Cadillac has. That’s how they do it in Japan, where what we call a Lexus here in the U.S. is still a Toyota over there. But here in the U.S., driving a high end Toyota does not say “money”. A Cadillac is expensive, because it is a Cadillac and not a Chevy. A Rolls Royce is expensive because it is practically hand made, by the best artisans working in the finest rarest woods, the finest rarest leathers, the finest wool carpeting, meticulously hand producing only a few cars every year. Ostentatious spending, yes, but at least its ostentatious spending in the service of excellence in craftsmanship. But the engineering and the technology in a Rolls or a Bentley is subordinate to the purpose of luxury for its own sake…everything about the car is about pampering and calling attention to its owner, it’s all about the nice gold device and something to catch the eye. But I might need to drive in it. All day and through the night, down uncertain roads, through whatever weather, in whatever conditions the journey throws at me.
And I have driven my Mercedes-Benz cars, mostly the little ‘C’ class because I’d owned it several years, but now also my ‘E’ class diesel, through some pretty hazardous weather, and down long twisty gravelly roads, winding up and down hazardous no guardrails here sorry you’re on your own terrain, and over scorching desert landscapes and I have never felt safer inside an automobile, or more in control when the going got seriously ugly. Luxury. I could always walk to the grocery store and take the bus or the train come vacation time. But I love cars and I love to drive and I want to see whatever there is down all the roads I’ve never been down. I want a car that will take me to all those places. Not an SUV because I drive long distances and also short ones over many kinds of roads and my car needs to be agile and fuel efficient not large, clunky and hungry all the time. But not a sports car either because I need to carry cargo and passengers. Comfortable on the inside, because I will be driving long hours. And built to keep its passengers safe, because you never know. And yes, beautiful too, because I love the automobile. But not empty beauty. Beauty that comes from within. I have specifications.
These days I admire car interiors from a safe distance via Google Images, and at the dealer’s whenever I take a car in for routine servicing and I can sit down inside one in the showroom and wonder. When I first laid eyes on the new ‘E’ class it took my breath away so beautiful did I find them to be inside and outside. Thank you Dr. Z for making them solid again, like they used to be. When I sat down in my very own new ‘E’ class diesel last December, and started its engine for the first time, it made a sound like I could have driven it clean around the world and it would only just be broken in. Das Beste oder nichts!
[Edited and edited again…and again…and again…sorry…]
