“So, it looks like the Lagonda isn’t the newest four-door in my collection anymore.” The message came from Houston oncologist Dr. Sanjay Mehta, a man who owns a McManse almost wholly devoid of furniture. His six-car garage, however, is packed to the rafters with what has to be a million bucks’ worth of high-performance machinery, including a turbocharged Lamborghini Gallardo. He has at least a dozen other cars stashed elsewhere. Three weeks prior, he’d purchased one of the William Towns–designed Aston Martin Lagondas, a car most notable for its extreme folded-paper design language and an ahead-of-its-time digital dash that proved to be as fragile as it was futuristic. I clicked the link Mehta included in his message. A 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 popped up. A brown 450SEL 6.9. It was so physically and metaphorically brown that there is a strong argument to be made for its being the brownest car in history. Mehta had purchased this W116 on eBay for the meager sum of $6006. On a whim. In case there were any doubt, Mehta is single.
The car was in Los Angeles. I was asked to deliver it to Houston. But nobody knew if the car would survive the trip. We had it sent over to the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, where factory-trained technicians presented Mehta with a $17,000 quote to bring the Benz up to snuff. He politely declined the offer, seeing as how decent 6.9-liter 450SELs usually sell for about $15,000. Instead, the car went to Westwood Mercedes, an independent shop in West L.A. Technicians there got the turn signals working, replaced a gear-stripped flywheel, and generally made sure the car was mechanically sound. A day before I was scheduled to depart, they informed us that they hadn’t really test-driven the car, as it had arrived sans plates. A mad shuffle ensued, and Mehta was able to procure temporary Texas proof of registration and have it overnighted to L.A. Despite six grand in repairs, I was headed off on a 2000-mile journey in a car whose roadworthiness was still in question.
In 1977, the late David E. Davis, Jr., tested a 6.9 for this publication—back when it was the fastest sedan in the world. On his 4000-plus-mile journey, the A/C quit the team and a lower engine pulley worked itself loose. That car was a factory-fresh press vehicle. This is a 78,000-mile, 34-year-old example with a limited-production SOHC big-block, a Citroën-licensed hydropneumatic suspension system only ever used on this particular model, and a whole lot of vacuum lines in likely questionable shape. A vibration cropped up between 75 and 80 mph, likely due to the damaged left-rear wheel, limiting my top speed. A minor exhaust leak revealed itself while running alongside the K-rails of the San Bernardino Freeway on the way out of Los Angeles. The power windows and sunroof opened at a rather leisurely pace. On the bright side, it was brown. On the unrealistically optimistic side, since a brown 6.9 was good enough to spirit Jean Reno and Robert De Niro into and out of harm’s way in Ronin, this particular car would certainly handle a four-day cruise to Houston. Right?
|
Into the Void
The Colorado, Sonora, and Chihuahua deserts are a psychic blast furnace that’ll reset the most fragmented of spirits, although not always in the way one intends. They’re where I got to know the 6.9. The car’s 250-hp M100 V-8 is a punched-out version of the limo engine that powered the 6.9’s predecessor, the 300SEL 6.3, the spiritual father of every ludicrously overpowered sedan that has rolled out of Germany since. It has a somewhat lazy tip-in, but once one’s right foot commits, the reserve of torque (360 lb-ft) is impressive even by modern standards. The bargain-basement Pioneer CD player, however, was wholly unimpressive. I embraced its no-fi nature as being solidly in the spirit of the era and pressed on across northern Arizona after following the Colorado River up Arizona 95 through Lake Havasu.
At Holbrook, I turned south off the interstate, hoping to take U.S. 60 into New Mexico and through the Very Large Array, a huge collection of radio telescopes you may recall from Dire Straits’ On the Night album cover. I was thwarted by an Arizona Highway Patrol roadblock and, perhaps more important, by a Very Large Fire burning south of the highway. I resignedly hauled the great brown beast of Baden-Württemberg around, pointed it north toward I-40 east, and headed back south on I-25 before bedding down in Socorro, New Mexico.
The next morning, the tetchy gas gauge suddenly dropped from three-eighths to just above reserve about 40 miles east of Alamogordo. Nerves on edge, I gently prodded the thirsty rhino across the White Sands Missile Range, and there was probably less than a gallon left in the tank when I pulled into the gas station on the outskirts of town. Crisis averted, I wound my way over the Sacramento Mountains, noting that the Kumho Power Star tires installed by the previous owner were laughably inadequate. Even at posted limits through the mountain pass, the cheapo specials would offer up a mild groan with about 20 degrees of steering dialed in. So much for hydropneumatically cushioned canyon carving.
|
On the crusty outskirts of Artesia, I texted fellow contributor Sam Smith: “Update: There is no art in Artesia, New Mexico.” Truth be told, I’d spoken too soon. Downtown Artesia was cute, like a more compact Roswell with about 60 percent less skank and 100 percent less chintzy alien crap. It was all backdropped by a great silvery oil refinery. When he’d inspected the car’s records, Mehta discovered that its California vanity plates had read “TYCOON.” With that in mind, I cued up Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” and pretended to be Jett Rink, James Dean’s lovelorn wildcat oilman from Giant. Dean’s dead. The E Street Band’s sax hero, Clarence Clemons, is dead. And Artesia was very nearly the last town I ever saw.
The Permian Basin Goes Dim
Out among the nodding donkeys and potash mines, about 35 miles east of Eunice, New Mexico—right on the Texas border—I started to get very tired. I thought maybe I’d grab a nap somewhere under a tree. Or perhaps I’d just can the notion of making it to San Antonio that night and bunk in Eunice. It was midafternoon in eastern New Mexico. In June. There were few clouds in the sky. But it seemed strangely dark with my sunglasses on. I took the sunglasses off. Maybe I’d just pull over and take a nap on the side of the highway. It was awfully hot. I’d probably die. I wasn’t particularly in the mood to die, but I supposed I could go either way on it. Still, I didn’t want Mehta to have had somebody die in his car. More to the point, I didn’t want the car to have to be towed all the way to Houston. I was vaguely aware that my thinking was downright batty. Something was very wrong.
Since leaving Socorro that morning, I’d been driving with the windows open. I’d been drinking water, but apparently not enough. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was heatstroke or dehydration or both. I rolled up the windows, flipped the big rocker switch marked “Compressor” on the climate-control panel, aimed the air vents at my wrists, and closed the sunroof. I cued up Motörhead’s “Bomber” and reminded myself of Sir Stanley Baldwin’s quote, “The bomber will always get through.” I kept on toward Eunice, attempting to balance haste with awareness of my own addled state, made it into town without passing out, and promptly downed a liter of frigid water and a Neapolitan ice-cream bar.
|
I’ve spent most of my life living and driving in hot places and had never experienced an episode like it. That evening, I did a little research. Apparently, your vision dims when you lose 10 to 15 percent of your body’s normal water content. I guessed the hot, dry wind had been evaporating the moisture from my skin before it became noticeable as sweat. When my body ran low on water, I stopped perspiring and didn’t notice. The result was akin to cutting the fins from an air-cooled Porsche engine and then firing it up. Due to my adventure in insufficient hydration and having totally blanked on the Mountain to Central time change, I arrived at the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland at one minute after 5 p.m. As a result, I missed seeing Jim Hall’s legendary Chaparrals, which remain my favorite racing cars that I’ve never laid eyes on in person. Even if it doesn’t kill you, dehydration, it seems, plays havoc with your best-laid plans.
Chastened, but refreshed and feeling lucky to be alive, I struck out for Ozona, a town where I was once accosted by creepy rednecks while driving a customized Plymouth Prowler across Texas. One of them memorably intoned, “You know, I ain’t sayin’ it’d be me, but somebody’s liable to jack you for that car, boy.” Despite the dirty, lingering memory, early-evening Ozona turned out to be a pleasant place full of trees, cute little houses, and ball fields. They even have a monument to Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. And why wouldn’t they? He kilt him a b’ar when he was only three, after all. I stuck around and shot some pictures. And drank some more water.
Juan Manuel Fangio and the Permanent Efficacy of Horsepower
Out in the Texas Hill Country, sunroof open, a waxing gibbous moon as my dome light, I was listening to Peter Peter Hughes’s “Los Viejós,” a New Order–esque number that finds an imagined Juan Manuel Fangio ruminating on the loss of Pierre Levegh, the Rodriguez brothers, Alberto Ascari, and other casualties of racing’s midcentury charnel house, along with the many who disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. Fangio, of course, survived it all and was named president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina in 1974. Although I’ve been unable to uncover any information as to whether Fangio ever owned a 6.9 like this one, I like to think he did. I like imagining the aging maestro running at high speed between Buenos Aires proper and his hometown of Balcarce, windows down, sunroof open.
|
The Benz was behaving itself. The 12.7-quart dry sump required no additional oil. The Merc simply plowed on through the night toward Bexar County. My imaginary Fangio (as distinct from Hughes’s avenging-angel rogue agent) must have felt like this every night during the last two decades of his life. If I’d won five Grand Prix titles, it’s all I’d want to do with the rest of my days—follow the warm weather around the world, assuring myself perfect moonlight motoring year-round. No crises, no confused, tormented women, no death, just endless miles of warm wind and lunar glow.
I spent the next day in San Antonio, setting off for Houston, 180 miles distant, as the sun sank toward the edge of the South Texas Plains. The old warhorse softly burbled into Mehta’s brick semicircle driveway in darkness. The slow-closing power windows willed themselves shut for the last time under my watch. I’d added 2000 miles to the car’s clock on what was likely the longest trip the Benz had ever made, given that on average it had been driven about 2300 miles a year since it was built. It’s likely the longest trip the car ever will make. Mehta’s lightly modded CL65 AMG packs more horsepower in one cylinder bank than the 6.9 does in both, but the old Six-Nine is wholly different, a curio, an artifact considered holy among a certain subset of automotive wing nuts. A vehicle deified because it struck a valiant blow in the name of performance during a time when “performance” largely meant tape-stripe packages and questionable fiberglass add-ons. The 6.9 could have been a final fist in the air. We weren’t sure if we’d ever see anything like it again.
|
But performance did come again. And rest assured, it will return over and over in some form or another until powerful vehicles, no matter how efficient and green, are legislated out of existence. Schumacher came along and broke Fangio’s five-time world championship record. Perhaps one of these days, Texas will get around to secession. And someday—despite our best efforts—the last 450SEL 6.9 will return to the soil. It’ll be long after I’m gone. In the meantime, I’ll be hard pressed to forget this one.
View Photos
View Photos
Leave a Reply