The craftspeople who can restore the classics are getting older, which poses an existential threat to the hobby of collecting vintage cars. The founder of a Massachusetts-based classic-car restoration firm, Paul Russell, claims that the attrition rate currently outpaces the replacement rate.
In a very remarkable fashion, a group of over sixty Kansas college students is drawing attention to the issue. They have spent more than six years restoring a 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300S, and it has been approved to compete in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, which will take place in California next month and is arguably the world’s most famous automotive event.
“This is really like an all-state winning high school football team playing a championship-caliber NFL team in the Super Bowl,” stated Brian Martin, the director of McPherson College’s Automotive Restoration Technology Program in Kansas.
It was a wild concept to compete in Pebble Beach. It was developed more than ten years ago during a strategic planning meeting. After the car was acquired in late 2016, the real work started in earnest. The Mercedes’ estimated value is more than $500,000, but the college won’t disclose how much it paid for it based on past sales.
“We made the decision to look for a Mercedes-Benz 300S Cabriolet, which was Mercedes’s finest luxury vehicle available in the early 1950s,” Mr. Martin stated. “It’s a car with the necessary class to be welcomed at Pebble Beach, but it also has enough support from the Mercedes community and parts availability to make it a realistic endeavor.”
It’s a rare car—just one of the students working on the restoration had ever seen one before—with only 200 or so ever produced. With a stipend from the college, the students worked on the project all year long.
The Mercedes 300S is incredibly intricate. When compared to the 300 SL Gullwing, the highest-end Mercedes sports car at the time, which had over 6,500 pieces, Matthew Kroeker, a student who worked on the car, stated that it had approximately 13,000 parts.
Due to the lengthy nature of the Mercedes 300S restoration, four-year college students graduated in the middle of the project and were replaced by new ones. A fresh group of students had to put the car back together after their predecessors had disassembled it, despite the fact that there were comprehensive pictures, notes, and instructions.
“When the project began, the freshmen who were working on finishing the car were in middle school,” Mr. Martin stated.
The hand-built Mercedes-Benz 300S Cabriolet was constructed with pre-war materials and conventional assembly techniques. It contained a lot of meticulously manufactured pieces, some of which were made of unusual materials like magnesium.
One of these is the shifter mechanism, which is exclusive to this vehicle and essentially irreplaceable. It has multiple breaks as well. Because magnesium is dangerous to weld and may catch fire easily if it gets too hot, it was believed to be irreparable, according to Mr. Kroeker. “Since this is Kansas, we were able to locate an oil refinery maintenance company with the necessary skills to repair the assembly,” the man stated.
It was difficult to do even something as simple as paint the car. Authenticity and craftsmanship are just as important criteria at Pebble Beach as presence and elegance. The Mercedes was originally going to be painted with lacquer, which is much less resilient than paints used today.
To get the characteristic shine of lacquer, much manual rubbing is required. Furthermore outmoded and harmful to the environment is lacquer. The students were able to mix a formula using contemporary paint that mimicked the look of a lacquer finish thanks to the assistance of Mr. Russell, the proprietor of the classic automobile restoration shop, who sent a similar car that he had restored to the college for reference.
“We gave the black paint a bit of matte finish clear coat; it gave it the right look but added durability,” Mr. Kroeker explained.
Mr. Russell was involved with the project from the start, including helping to choose the specific car. His work has received Best of Show at Pebble Beach on multiple occasions.
It was really original, had solid foundations, and offered some excellent templates for things like carpets and seats and how they were made in the beginning, the man remarked.
Mercedes-Benz was also essential to the project’s success. Mercedes-Benz, like Porsche and Ferrari, is acutely aware of the significance of their brand’s history. According to Mr. Kroeker, the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in California gave the school guidance and experience in addition to helping to locate components and handbooks.