Vector Models (Ukraine) has now come out with a Mercedes-Benz 500K Sport Tourer, in two versions: pre-restoration black with red interior, and as it looks restored today in 2021, dark green with black stripe, beige interior, and green top. The unrestored black, as well as the green restored model version come as both open and closed cars.
Both models are available from Petr Babayev (pb_scalemodels@hotmail.com): only 10 green and 10 black open, as well as 10 green and 10 black closed cars were or will be produced on order by Vector. Depending on the order situation, it should take between 3 and 6 weeks for the ordered model to be shipped to the collector.
The 500K Sport Tourer from 1935 with chassis and matching engine number 123724 is interesting in my opinion, because it comes with a permanently affixed car trunk, which was manufactured by the Munich company "hopako". What at first glance looks like a strange bulge when you look at the 500K with the roof closed, turns out to be an ingenious design when the roof is open. The transition from the folded back roof to the trunk proves to be "seamless", so to speak. The trunk top and the back end of the car form a smooth, harmonious whole, that gives the car an additional stretched elegance. Everything simply belongs together here!
But as I said, that's my personal opinion.
Some history:
The early history of the car is rather unknown. What is known is that the 500K was delivered to its first owner on November 19, 1935, by the Daimler-Benz branch in Munich. Who that first owner was, is unknown (at least to me).
Since the initial history of the car is unknown, the old stories had to be told again. Three of them - all readable in "The Press of Atlantic City" - were served up: the car had been ordered by the Reich Propaganda Ministry and had been used by Hitler. That alone is nonsensical: if the Propaganda Ministry had in fact ordered the car, wouldn’t it have been for use by its own boss, Dr. Goebbels? Another story says that the car had been Hitler's personal car (yet another in the already thousand or so in his private garage!!!). Finally, Dr. Cox's daughter says she always heard her father tell the story that the car was used by Goering: he had owned the car and fled with it from Berlin...
The first known owner of the car is a certain Mr. Unholzer from Munich, at least according to Bonham’s auction catalog of January 16, 2014. But, as noted in the past, whatever is in the descriptions of the auction houses is not always exactly truthful. Here, as is well known, sometimes cheating is used to drive up the price. "Caveat emptor" was already recommended by the ancient Romans!
In any case, the car is for sale in Munich in 1951, and an American on his honeymoon, Ralph W.E.Cox Jr., dental surgeon, ex-pilot in the US Navy, and since 1949 founder and operator of a small airline of 18 planes (the “US Overseas Airlines”, which went bankrupt in 1964) buys it without further ado, and drives the car from Munich via Paris to Le Havre, from where the 500 K Sport Tourer is shipped to New York. Eventually, Dr. Cox Jr. picks up the car at the Port of New-York and drives it home to New-Jersey. The car remains in the family for the next 60 years.
Nonetheless, the car spends many years as an exhibit at the "Frontier Village Museum" near the Cape May County Airport located at the southern tip of New-Jersey. In the nineties, the car is said to be "sympathetically restored" by the son-in-law, which roughly translates to: Everything remains the same, nothing is changed, improved, or touched up; everything is just polished up a bit. What is certain is that the seats and the interior trim had not been replaced.
The car then went to the Automobile Museum of Petit-Jean-Mountain, in Morrilton in Arkansas (a town of 6600 inhabitants), where it remained on display until offered on auction by Bonhams. Meanwhile Dr. Cox Jr. dies in 2012, aged 97. For USD 1,430,000, the 500K was sold in its original condition at the Scottsdale auction on January 16, 2014.
The new owners Thomas and Rhonda Taffet had the car restored from the ground up, exhibited it at the 2015 “Concours d' Élégance” in Pebble Beach after the completed restoration, where the car won the Second Prize in Class I.
Afterwards, the sports tourer is offered at the 2017 Monterey Auction by RM Sothebys, and finds a new buyer for USD 1,540,000.
Finally, the car appears for sale once again, this time in the catalog of Bonhams' "Quail Motorcar Auction" held on August 14, 2020.
The 500K now has 37,019 Km (or 23,003 US miles) on the clock. The pre-sale estimate for the car runs now between $2,000,000 and $2,500,000.
The car remained unsold.
Food for thought: I only have photos of the model, so I can't judge its quality and accuracy, but I would dearly like an explanation why the closed "fabric" roof on the green Vector model is black, while on the automobile itself it is unmistakably and clearly green! This just should not be that way!
Scale Masters from the Netherlands has just released two new 1:43 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter models in their series of ambulances.
The Sprinter Visser Otaris-S (Ambulance Ijsselland) for 85 EUR (+ shipping), and the Sprinter Visser Otaris-S (Ambulance UMCG Groningen - 2019) also for 85 EUR (+ shipping).
MAL-Studio from Kirov (Russia) now brings out the Daimler Type C4 truck from 1907. The 1:43 model is available without headlights for 7500 RUB or with headlights for 8000 RUB. To order at andranikpasha@mail.ru
(с)BERND D. LOOSEN