This is my little red mistress and the strange journey that bought her to Perth, Western Australia
She is an early 250SL, bought new in London by Henry Drettman, of Active Tool and Manufacturing fame, who purchased the car as a gift for his wife on learning that she was pregnant with their first daughter. The Drettman family had been in the automotive industry since 1903 and Henry Drettman was consulting to Ford UK and living in London at that time.
In late 1968, the Drettmans returning to Michigan, to their ancestral home and brought the car with them. The car was treasured but rarely used as it was RHD in the very LHD-centric country.
On the death of Mrs Drettman in 1995, the car passed to Kaye, the daughter whom the car had first been purchased in celebration of. Kaye Drettman kept the car until 2012 when she was transferred to Florida University, where the lack of A/C would have been an issue.
She sold the car in January 2012 to Graham Wadsworth, an Australian born automotive design engineer working with Jaguar USA in Detroit. Graham bought the car to bring back with him to Australia but by the time it arrived in Melbourne, Graham had been transferred to the UK to lead Jaguar's new design Engineering Centre.
I purchased the car in late 2012 and have been working on her since then.
She has 60,000 genuine miles from new and is in remarkably good all-round condition and a pleasure to drive in the pleasant climes of Western Australia.
