In the mid to late 60s Mercedes was forced to make design changes due to the fact that they were transiting from old, shot up, melted down, recycled 'Patton' tank steel to new virgin Krupp steel. A single Patton made 20 or so Pagodas. The Patton steel had lingering design memories that were trumped by Krupp iron.
Remember this the next time you reflect in your Pagoda. Patton Karma is different than Krupp Karma.
Your Pagoda could have been an 88mm Howitzer in its previous life!!
...and your reference source for this claim?
First of all, the Patton Tank, (M46, M47, M48, M60) were not produced until 1950, post war. At that point production was for need, and there were not thousands of "shot up" Pattons laying around for German steel makers to scavenge.
The Sherman tank (M4) was the main battle tank for the US Army in WWII. Perhaps much of that surplus was scrapped in Europe in the late 1940's, maybe early 1950's, but I can hardly believe that there would still be enough of them around "by the mid to late 1960s". That's a long time for scrap to sit around waiting for recycling. I could be wrong, which is why I wanted to know the source of your information.
If 100% of the weight of a Sherman were recyclable steel, and the Pagoda's weight was all steel, one tank might provide enough steel for the 20 Pagodas claimed...however that neglects some facts such as some cast iron (engine block); cast aluminum (head); sheet steel, sheet aluminum, brass, copper, and non-metallic products adding to the weight. All of those metals have differerent compositions. Mercedes specified the steel, suppliers supplied it. If it did not meet spec, it wasn't used--that's generally the case.
But the biggest suspect in the story is that the Pagoda was barely a blip on the radar of auto manufacture. Volkswagen? Citroen, Renault, Peugeot, Fiat, Opel, Ford? All European manufacturers using a lot more steel that the Pagoda production ever consumed.
The claim also infers there was something suspect about the quality of the steel/iron used in the M4...anybody who has worked on Mercedes of the era, or any car of that era regardless of domicile, knows that they all rust pretty easily.
When I was researching the article on the American Mercedes published in The Star earlier this year, one of the sales tactics used by the importers of the German Mercedes (nearly identical) was "German Steel"; I suspected this claim and consulted a well known metallurgist. He told me (and this was published) that the quality of steel in Germany and USA at the turn of the century was the same as they had the same processes. The German quality was a marketing tactic. Neither Mercedes--American or German--of the time flourished in the USA.
