Mercedes 600, the legendary car of the past

2024 Author: Erin Ralphs | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-19 11:42

It would be more correct to call the Mercedes 600 luxury car family a dynasty whose history began back in 1924 with the release of the Mercedes 140 PS limousine. In 1926, the Mercedes automobile company was renamed Mercedes-Benz, and under this name exists to this day. In 1930, a series of Mercedes-Benz 770 cars was launched, intended for the top leadership of Germany.

Then several more models were developed, and although their production took place in the conditions of the most severe post-war economy, all cars adequately represented the German automotive industry at car shows and international exhibitions. Finally, in 1963, the Mercedes-Benz W100 was introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the first model in a long line of "six hundredth" Mercedes. The furore was amazing, representatives of the Mercedes trading company were flooded with applications for a new car. The queue of people wishing to buy a Mercedes 600 stretched for four years.

The prestige of the car just rolled over. The owners of the Mercedes 600 at different times were Elvis Presley and the beautyElizabeth Taylor, Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis and famous Beatle John Lennon, chief official of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev and many other celebrities.

Mercedes 600 was assembled only by hand and was produced in two versions - a standard limousine and a long one, based on the Pullman chassis. There was also a modification for a landau type convertible, in which only the rear part of the roof folds down, opening the passenger sector of the cabin. The Pullman's long cabin gave plenty of room for a multitude of seating combinations, bars, magazine shelves and even small wardrobes.

Mercedes 600, the characteristics of which were inaccessible to other cars, was out of competition until 1991. There were several attempts to create a worthy successor to the famous Mercedes, but they all failed miserably. Only in 1991 there was a breakthrough, at the Geneva Motor Show the Mercedes W140 was presented with the latest V12 engine and countless technical innovations that were both in the cabin and under the body, in the trunk and on the ceiling. Each engineering surprise, however, had its own functional significance, and there was practically nothing superfluous in the car. Thus, the legendary W100 has a direct successor in the face of the promising W140.

There was no such excitement around the "six hundredth" W140, which accompanied the appearance of the W100 in 1963. But still, the interest in the new car was huge, although many Europeans were stopped by the exorbitant dimensions of the car, as well as its transcendentalcost.

In 1992, the production of the W140 was put on the conveyor in two relatively inexpensive modifications, for the sake of immutable market laws. The car had to be sold, and buyers like Elvis Presley or Jack Nicholson were gone. So the executive class Mercedes available to the average buyer began to roll off the assembly line. Currently, the Mercedes 600, the price of which varies from 180,000 to 400,000 rubles, is in fairly high, steady demand.