| Cabriolets, you know, those endearing pre-World War II looking convertibles with lots of lights up front, looming fenders and suicide doors; oh yes, and curved S-shaped Landau bars on the top’s sides. Well, Bob Silver bought one when he was a young staff engineer at Hoffman Electronics Company and a graduate USC night school student. In those days he mostly carried his surfboards on an extremely unreliable 1952 Austin A40 van but when the tiny panel truck was broken (often), the Mercedes carried his balsa, redwood and pine longboard in style. |
Gullwing. Its central lubrication system is a
great convenience to the owners as are the three-piece fitted luggage
sets. A few were sold new in Hollywood for the then price of two Caddy
ragtops ($6,500). One was sold at the height of the collector car madness
in a London auction for 250,000 pounds sterling. The modern artist Mr.
Hiro Yamagata spectacularly decorated some with floral, animal or bird
motifs and is reportedly offering each truly mobile art at $1,250.000. Once daily drivers in Southern California, today 220 Cabriolets are likely to be headed to Germany where their value is going up. |
| Hobbies often turn into business and by 1970 Bob’s acquaintances were bringing their cabriolets to him for help but the local homeowners’ association zealot threateningly counted the cars in Bob’s driveway. So Bob rented a tin shed in west L.A. industrial zone and established a min-business. Cabriolet Enterprises, exclusively supplying special services for the fabulous cabriolets. The Mercedes-Benz 220 The Mercedes-Benz 220 Cabriolet A is a luxurious convertible coupe built in Stuttgart 1951-5 in extremely limited production (1200). It is a modernized 1938 design using a heavy oval tube undercarriage with independent suspension and a double swing rear axle. The bolt on chassis is wooden?framed as are the suicide doors. The motor is a straight six with a single overhead cam; it is closely related to that of the powerful '55 Mercedes |
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