Strong money for ebay 280SL

[ctaylor738]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mercedes-Benz-SL-Class-W113-Pagoda-70-280SL-Excellent-restored-example-in-receipts_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem2558bc236eQQitemZ160402514798QQptZUSQ5fCarsQ5fTrucks

Looks like a nice car.

[john.mancini]

I think the buyer got a terrific deal. Our good friend from Cascadia Classic sells great cars.
John

[bpossel]

Nice car, but as I look at the curve of the body panel around the left rear tire, it looks odd?  Also the molding is not straight?
Bob

[dseretakis]

I agree.  The contour of the lower part of both rear quarterpanels is not right.  It lies too low to the ground.  Unless this is some kind of illusion, there was an improper repair/replacement done to both both quarter panels. 

[thelews]

It becomes clear in this pic

[Nate]

Agreed.  Also if you saw the picture of the rear of the car things look "off" under the left-hand bumper.  Could have been something as small a parking lot fender bender, backing up over an object, etc., if in fact there was any damage and repair.  I'm sure it's worth every penny, especially at $41K.

[bogeyman]

The upper chome pieces form a horizontal line from front to back if correct. This car probably had rust in the original mounting holes and rather than repair them they redrilled them higher.
You see a lot of cars with these pieces missing, so at least these were still there.

[ctaylor738]

Even 59K isn't enough money to get them (or a correct exhaust).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mercedes-Benz-SL-Class-280SL-1971-Mercedes-280SL-in-excellent-condition_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem335ad20f97QQitemZ220567048087QQptZUSQ5fCarsQ5fTrucks

[badali]

Here is a car with straight molding.  This is as far as I can tell the original unrestored body of my 230 SL.  It still has the notches at the headlights.  It was repainted at least once.  For a fraction of the price of those cars.
Brad

[MichaelB.]

The car shown does not have the small bit of lower quarter panel painted black either... And it should, as it would help. But I believe the curvature of the panel is incorrect and therefore hanging down too far. If it were tucked into place better perhaps then it would look correct.

Here is my original looking the way it was produced.

[Iconic]

"The car shown does not have the small bit of lower quarter panel painted black either..." a quote by MichaelB.
1. Is the lower rear quarter really supposed to be painted black? Are you talking about that strip of metal at the edge all the way at the bottom (rear, behind tire)?

2. Cascadia put together a nice car. We all make decisions on what to fix and how. Very few cars are $100,000 cars and we can even find flaws in those. The car that he sold looks fresh and clean. The colors are beautiful. I don't know the condition of what he started with, but whatever level of work he did helped another Pagoda stay on the road. He got a good penny for it too.
Nice job, Cascadia. Thank you.

[badali]

I looked at an original sales brochure and the rear quarter is all the same color as the car.  I'm not sure where you are talking about it being black.  All the books I have been going through also have the rear quarters in body color.  The only black I see is under the doors and hidden areas under the front and in the grill area.

[Benz Dr.]

I think maybe the rear chrome is a bit too high. This makes the 1/4 panel appear to be lower than it really is.

  Since we've all become experts on these cars, why not have a national convention where we can see  perfect cars and have them picked apart by knowlegable judges? At some point it's what having a model specific car club is all about and it makes me wonder why we aren't there yet.

  After all, isn't this why we spend time and money on restoration? I think If I was spending 100K to restore a car I'd want to know it was done to original specs according to Pagoda Group standards. Who, other than our operation, is better qualified than us? Why haven't we put together a document outlining what that perfect car is, and why are we not looking at this?

[MichaelB.]

Here you go, I went out to the garage and took a photo.

Now you can see the black absolutely original & correct factory applied lower black portion that I spoke of. It would help on the car originally mentioned.

[Benz Dr.]

So you've had this car since it was new and can verify that it's never been touched? I've never seen that on an original car but I've seen it on a 113 before.

This kind of reminds me of the car with factory hood insulation. It's factory original done by a MB dealer in most cases. It might be on your original, never touched car but it's not believed to be original. I'm more inclided to believe things are original that haven't been added rather than something that's not normally there and somehow was put there.

 I saw a 100% original and very low mileage 230SL last year and the grill area was NOT blacked out. The blacked out areas were hand applied with a paint brush so it's totally believable that some cars didn't have this treatment. Normally they do but this one definately didn't.

So, it is possible yours is correct but all the info I have points in another direction. Be interesting to find out for sure. I do think that most of these oddball things are more dealer than factory in almost every case. 

[66andBlue]

...  Now you can see the black absolutely original & correct factory applied lower black portion that I spoke of. .... 

MichaelB,
it looks like you may have a unique original car .. provided you can show me (having lived in in MO, the "show-me-State" for a long time) that you bought it when it was new.    

[badali]

OK,  I see what you are talking about with the black.  I looked at the original brochure and it had a close up of this area in body color.  Maybe some had it and some didn't.  May be a dealer applied item.  Some cars have different looking undercoating also that looks original.  There could be many variations.  My 280 SE 4.5 has original paint and undercoating and the undercoating looks like your picture but none can be seen without looking under the car.  Interesting topic we have going...
Brad

[MichaelB.]

Yes, known car since new. Original owner (still alive) confirmed - never touched. I too am sure it was applied to some... And not applied to others. Of course you may believe what you would like about what you think to be original, but in this case I know this to be original & correct on my 230. And (back to the original topic) it would help immensely on the look of this car that started this topic.


Oh! And my 230 has black behind the grill too  

[Benz Dr.]

The 113 and 107 cars are generally black along the botom of the car. Are you saying that the car looks better with the area behind the rear wheel blacked out? ( At least I think that's the way it reads..... )

  I think it comes down to how many cars you've seen. The more you work around them the more familiar they become. Some things are always the same and then I've seen switches around the dash that don't seem to belong - they're factory looking but seem to serve no purpose. Dealer installed options seem to have the most variation such as radios or seat belts.
 I'm not going to say that I'm the definitive expert because I'm sure there's going to be someone out there who knows more than me about some aspects of the car but common things are common. I've worked on thirty or more pagodas and they tend to have certain things are always the same. we know that all three models are different and those have been well documented here and many other places. The 230SL seems to be the one with the quirks and odd treatments. Very early cars are quite different than later ones of the same year.

 I've judged at three different 190SL conventions so I know those cars a bit too but there's always more to learn regardless of what you're looking at. If someone can prove to me that this was a factory treatment, then I'll buy it.
As I said before, this was applied after the car was painted so it's questionable.

What I'm not saying is that anyone is making it up. I do believe it came that way, but I see no reasonable explaination for it.