Remember our failed attempt to sell a Mercedes-Benz 200 – W115 flavour - at Techno Classica Essen last year? Well, naysayers be silenced, because the old smoker is still going strong in the hands of new owner (and C&SC reader) Simon Stokes.
Simon recently got in touch with an update on the car’s progress, including a trip back across the Channel last summer.
Stokes takes up the story: “The Merc had a shakedown run to Norfolk for my mum’s birthday, a 250-mile round trip or thereabouts, and performed faultlessly. Just as well, too, because it was going to France a few weeks later. I figured that you all took it to Essen and it got there and back... so what could possibly go wrong?
“The destination was a fantastic little gite on a farm in the village of Saint-Aignan-sur-Ry, near Ry in the Seine-Maritime department, itself part of the Haute-Normandie region.
"We were about 25km from Rouen, a fantastic medieval city with distinctive cathedral. Rouen was always an overnight stop for me as a kid, heading to somewhere else in France with my parents.
"Not the brightest day, with a bit of drizzle – I keep a sponge in the car for the leaks… On the way to the riverbank we attracted a fair bit of attention, a truck driver down at the docks hanging out of his cab to give us a "Wahay!" and the thumbs-up.
