Should you needed to have a good time the two hundredth birthday of the US of America by shopping for a brand new 1976 automobile, you could possibly be a patriot of the proletariat and get a Chevy with red-white-and-blue stripes and/or inside (choice code 1776!), take pleasure in Gerald Ford’s peace with freedom by selecting up a brand new Bicentennial Version Ford F-150 or shake your fist at encroaching — and apparently Communist-inspired — security rules by buying one of many final Cadillac Eldorado convertibles (Eldo ragtop manufacturing restarted eight years later). Or you could possibly snicker cynically at these Detroit-centric rubes, brush the white-powder residue off a briefcase containing $19,359 in money ($106,901 in 2023 {dollars}) and alternate it for a gleaming new 450 SL roadster. Practically a half-century later, this is a type of vehicles, present in a self-service automobile graveyard simply south of the Denver metropolis limits.
The Mercedes-Benz R107 first went on sale in 1971, and it set the file (which nonetheless stands) for longest manufacturing run of any Mercedes-Benz car by being constructed by way of 1989.
It was offered as a two-seat convertible with non-obligatory removable roof (which remained with this automobile to the tip), whereas a hardtop coupe model was obtainable by way of the early Eighties.
These vehicles had been constructed very, very properly and held collectively for many years with correct upkeep. Nonetheless, as soon as one begins to look tough, the price of restoration typically exceeds real-world resale worth by fairly a bit. Which means that loads of R107s languish for years in driveways and yards, then find yourself taking the inevitable closing journey to the knacker’s yard. So long as I have been hanging out in junkyards, I have been discovering discarded R107s with miserable regularity.
This one was too far gone to have a lot likelihood of ever being put again into service. In some unspecified time in the future, the decklid or at the least the decklid badge from a late-Eighties automobile was put in.
Junkyard customers glommed the gauge cluster and a lot of the sprint elements.
The engine within the U.S.-market SL/SLC for 1976 was a 4.5-liter SOHC V8 rated at 180 horsepower and 220 pound-feet. The non-obligatory fuel-injected V8 obtainable within the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible made 200 horsepower and 400 pound-feet, but it surely wanted 8.3 liters to do this.
A 3-speed computerized was necessary on the R107s offered right here in 1976, although European Mercedes-Benz customers may get their SLs and SLCs with guide transmissions by way of 1979.
The looks of U.S.-market R107s additionally suffered from our strict headlight and bumper necessities.
Will somebody purchase the roof earlier than the crusher eats this automobile? I believe not, based mostly on the truth that no person appears to purchase Cadillac Allanté and Chrysler’s TC by Maserati roofs from the boneyards, regardless of limitless anecdotal tales of their excessive resale worth.
The 450 Sl and 450 SLC had been so prestigious right here that Ford used the SLC in its Granada commercials.
