Mercedes-Benz 125th Anniversary Historic Concourse

Mercedes-Benz is one of the few car companies that actually continue to provide factory support to its old heritage cars. They actually have a separate division, Mercedes-Benz Classics to provide support for its heritage cars. Servicing, repairs and restoration work can be carried out here, just like how Merc would do the same for its present day cars in its regular service centers.

Service bay of MB Classic Center in Irvine, California

MB Classic Center in Stuttgart, Germany

The only other car companies who do so are Porsche, BMW and Audi. These companies actually still manufacture and keep stock of parts for their classic models. Like the MB Classic Center, they also do servicing, repair and restoration work, just like how they would treat their present day models!



Mercedes-Benz and Porsche models are often recommended as an ideal "first classic car" for newbie classic car lovers. Mainly due to their relatively easy sourcing of parts, continued factory support and high built quality. Try doing the same with say a classic Jaguar XK120 or an Alfa Romeo 8C, or even a Datsun 240Z or a Toyota 2000GT. A typical mainstream car maker would cringe at the very idea of extending support to all its older models. Even for a company as big and as rich as Toyota. In a typical car company, any suggestion of supporting old cars would immediately be shot down, the reason given would go something along the line of "we exist to sell cars, we want people to buy our new cars, not keeping old jalopies!" It's not because they don't have an illustrious history. It is just that these companies are guided by a very different set of values. Toyota for example has a rich history spanning over 75 years. Both the Corolla and Land Cruiser have more than 40 years of heritage and the 2000GT is one of the most valuable Japanese classics, but you would be hard pressed to find Toyota pouring money or hosting any public events in recognition of this. To these companies, jubilee celebrations are a time to launch campaign models / "special edition" variants of their existing model offerings, not pouring money to talk about their old models, cars which they can no longer make any money out of. So what Mercedes-Benz did was quite out of the ordinary, and they ought to be given credit so taking the path less trodden. And they actually resisted the temptation to roll out some gimmicky 125th Anniversary Special Edition C-class / E-class with some different paint job and accessories!


Did you know the 190SL had leather material as its hood liner?

We have written a quite bit regarding Mercedes-Benz's 125th anniversary celebration. Locally, MB kicked start the celebration with a historic concourse, modeled after the famous Californian classic cars event event Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. And what an event it was! The event was co-orgaznied by Mercedes-Benz Malaysia with Historic Motoring Ventures. I believe this is event is the first ever concourse style motoring event in the country. And what a splendid job they did! I hope this will not be last historic concourse event locally.

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