I love doing online research, so in 2010 I decided a Pagoda would most suit our lifestyle, and joined this group. Any of the W113 models would have made us happy. It just seemed to me then that there were minor points in favour of each of the three models, and no serious drawbacks to any of them. White was the colour I wanted, without air conditioning, with metric gauges, and definitely a manual instead of an automatic. I found Dan (Benz Dr), who hooked me up with a fellow from the Detroit area who wanted to sell his 230SL. I won't mention his name because he's not a member here. He didn't know much about the history of the car, although he said the previous owner before him had told him that a GM executive had once owned the car. I found out later that, according to the VIN, the car was original sold in Sweden.
How well I remember taking the car for a test drive with the previous owner! It sounded fine and Dan was willing to vouch for the mechanical condition of the car, since he had worked on it a few times. At the time, the Canadian dollar was stronger than the USA dollar, so that helped me out quite a bit compared to prices since then. The paperwork involved in changing the title from USA to Canada wasn't really difficult, although I had to take the car on a flatbed to the Canada Customs office at the Bluewater Bridge, about 35km away, to fill out the forms. The I chose the licence plate "D 230SL" from the Ontario government, since of course "230 SL" was not available. (Still haven't found it. Anybody?)
This photo shows our car a few months later, at Dan's shop, before it earned a roadworthy certificate. Ontario has more stringent standards than Michigan.
