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1937 MERCEDES-BENZ W125
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Goodwood 2012 offered me another chance to see this great car and I was fascinated to see the Daimler-Benz Classic crew tending to it in period overalls and using the same set of tools and equipment as they did in the late 1930s
If ever there was a car I would have loved to see being raced in anger and in its prime nothing would have given me more pleasure than to see the W125 take on the Auto Union V16s and assorted Alfa Romeos, Maseratis, Bugattis, et al in 1937. Goodwood 2012 offered me another chance to see this great car and I was fascinated to see the Daimler-Benz Classic crew tending to it in period overalls and using the same set of tools and equipment as they did in the late 1930s.
The car featured a 5.6-litre straight supercharged engine developing 550bhp, which was housed in a very stiff ladder type chassis made up of oval tubing. What was so elaborate was the starting procedure.
The car would be fired up using a hand held electric starter to spin the motor to life. It would then be gently revved to get it up to operating temperature before the spark plugs would be pulled out, to be inspected. Bosch technicians did that on the race circuits in the 1930s but at Goodwood the technicians from Daimler-Benz Classic handled this chore. If the plugs were full of soot the mixture was deemed to be way too rich and this meant a change of jets. Conversely if the plugs looked dry and burnt it meant another jet change to enrichen the mixture.
This actually played out at Goodwood and to see the plug box shaped to conform to the curvature of the W125 while the mechanics worked on it and then fired it to life again was one of the highlights of a Grand Prix car which one very rarely see in this day and age.
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