1962 300SE

1962 300SE

Purchase Date: August 2000

Purchase City: Oakland, CA

Purchase Price: N/A

Name: “Oppenheimer”


I was looking for another “vintage” Mercedes about this time, and had put the word out among my Mercedes buddies that I wanted to locate a W110 chassis (“finnie”) model.


The W110 was rather plebeian for its time, despite being a Mercedes.  While the German designers had given a grudging nod to the modern fins of the era, the car remained very stark and simple by the day’s standards.


I got an email from a list buddy, Joe, one day.  He said that he had seen a listing in Craigslist in Oakland for a finnie, and would be willing to check it out for me if I was interested.  By all means, I responded, the excitement building as I waited for his call.


“Well, I looked at the car.  It’s really nice, but it’s, well, lacking in one area.  It has no glass.  As in no windshield, no rear window, no side windows with the exception of the driver’s window.  It was a little unnerving driving it around without a windshield, to say the least.  Otherwise, it’s a great car!”


The lack of glass had caused the price to be relatively low, as people were either put off by the lack of it, or they researched what it would cost to buy new glass from Mercedes.  Ouch!  But - I had a secret weapon.  I knew a glass guy in Redwood City who would know if the glass was unobtanium.


So I called my glass guy.  He tells me the window glass is no big deal - it’s flat glass and readily available or can be made up easily and cheap.  The windshield and rear glass, well, that was a different story and he would have to get back to me on that.


In the meantime, I was talking to my good friend and parts supplier, Randy Steele of European Parts Specialists, in Santa Barbara, CA.  Randy had a good supply of NOS parts and would probably know of any sources for the glass.


“Well Dan, you know that the glass is the same for all of the W110 and W111 chassis cars, don’t you?”  Voila!  Now all I had to do was locate a donor car to get some glass for mine.  What happened next was nothing short of serendipitous....


I call my glass guy to let him know about this startling revelation.  After I explain this, he sort of pauses and says, “I know where there’s a car just like yours you can get for cheap.”


“Oh yeah, where?”


“At my parent’s house.  My Dad has this old beater Mercedes that’s been buried in the mud next to the garage for years.  He’s always telling my Mom he’s going to restore it, but he probably hasn’t touched it in five years at least.  I’ll find out what it is and let you know.”


Fast forward to a few weeks later:


We’re in San Francisco, working with a fellow Mercedes list buddy Al Lumas, who has a horse ranch in Milpitas, CA, in the southeast part of the South Bay.  Al has volunteered his ranch for a “listfest” to assemble the cars and swap parts.  That morning, courtesy of his ranch hand, pickup truck and trailer, we go to Oakland to pick up the car.  We bring it back to the ranch and unload, then head to the west Bay into the mountains to pick up the donor car.


It’s like a 40 degree rain forest near the top of the mountains, with the fog rolling over us and chilling and soaking everyone to the bone after coming from the warm East Bay.  It takes some serious winching on the part of Al’s ranch hand, who without his help we would never have been able to do this, and the donor car is on the trailer, on its way back to Al’s ranch.


The next day the fun begins.  With a barbecue hosted by Al, a group of Mercedes enthusiasts begin to swarm over both cars, removing and installing parts as needed and helping themselves to anything that’s not.  By the end of the day the 300SE is intact with glass and all sorts of other bits both on and in it, and the donor car sitting there like a picked over turkey carcass after Thanksgiving.
















This was a great example of the camaraderie that exists in the Mercedes community.  Lots of people came out to help and we had a great time doing it.


When this was all said and done, I prepared the car for transport back to Florida where we would meet up with it again.  Al, bless his heart, had a terrible time getting rid of the donor car.  He was sure the local fire rescue would take it for practice, but they didn’t want it.  He finally got a junk hauler to take it away several weeks later.  Sorry about that, Al.


As I waited for the car to arrive in Florida I started to research it in detail.  The history of the car made ownership even that much more fascinating:


The 300SE was purchased new in 1962 by a nuclear physicist that worked at UC Berkeley.  He lived close to campus and walked to his lab and classes, so the car was rarely driven.  It was typically taken out for Sunday drives, often to the waterfront where he berthed his sailboat.  This accounted for the very low mileage on the car.  This is the provenance that led to the name “Oppenheimer”.


I was able to contact his daughter, who lived in Southern California, and talk to her about the car.  Here is what she told me:


“Dad only drove the car on weekends, to church and down to the pier where he kept his sailboat.  The rest of the time it sat in our garage, a place where we were not allowed to go unless accompanied by him.  When we rode in the car, we had to keep our hands folded in our lap, and were not allowed to rest our arms on the armrests or even (heaven forbid!) roll the windows up or down.  Of course no food was allowed in the car.”


She was excited to hear that the car had been placed with someone interested in preserving it as well as enjoying it.  The conversation with her was fascinating, to say the least, and gave me a great deal of insight into the car’s history.


I bought the car from the estate of the original owner, which had been tied up in probate for a number of years.  This was the reason for the missing glass....


The car had been in storage in a warehouse in Colma, California.  Colma is known as the “City of the Dead”, as it consists of a very large cemetery and very few living residents.  It is so large it has its own ZIP code.


While in storage, vandals had broken into the warehouse and ran around breaking everything and anything that was glass or breakable.  The only reason the driver’s window wasn’t broken was due to the car having been moved a few days prior.  The person who moved it had rolled the window down to gain access to the steering wheel.


The car arrived in Florida a week or so later.  Upon arrival I noticed that the transporter had chained the car down so tightly that it appeared that the suspension air bags had been damaged.  The car was so low I could barely move it, and the suspension system did not inflate the rear air bags.  Not good.


Fortunately, I was able to replace the rear airbags and the suspension was once again functional.


With air suspension the car was amazing to drive.  Considering the technology of the early 1960s and the desire for most manufacturers to dampen the suspension to the point where one felt like they were riding on a cloud, the air suspension does a wonderful job of providing excellent damping against road objects while keeping the suspension tight.


I drove the car for several months until the water pump began to leak.  Uh-oh.  Not something readily available.  It had to come from Germany, and there were none to be had at the time.  I had to wait for a production run of pumps from the supplier, which was expected within 30 days.


When the pump finally arrived and I got it installed, I came to the realization that while this was a wonderful car, it wasn’t practical for me as a daily driver.  With this in mind, I passed it on to a gentleman who is a community college instructor in Bolder, CO.  His family had a similar car when he was a child, and he had been looking for one for a long time.  He took Oppenheimer home to Colorado and spent a significant amount of money having the car restored to its original condition.


You can see more pictures of the car here.

300SE

Donor Car