Mercedes Benz - The Best Car in the World

Sir,

This country is indeed fortunate in being the home of a company with the enviable reputation of not only producing the finest car in the world in the past, and continuing to do so, but also of producing aircraft engines giving us air supremacy in two world wars as well as powering most commercial aircraft and pioneering the most advanced forms of propulsion.

On the 3rd June a rally was held at Blenheim Palace at which 700 cars were displayed covering this Company’s products from 1904 to date. The remarks of the large crowd present indicated beyond any doubt that these people were fully aware of the excellence of these cars.

MOTOR SPORT is a publication which is perhaps unique in this country in appealing to a section of the public most likely to be interested and appreciative of this type of event. I have examined my copy and can find no reference to it.

It would be interesting to know if the same lack of interest would be shown, if Mercedes, MOTOR SPORTS particular brand of “best car in the world”, staged a similar type of rally, supposing that they were able to muster an equal variety and number of cars.

C. F. BATH

London, W.1.

(Mr. Bath implies that I ignored the R.-R. Rally deliberately, so I would like him to have the facts. I had greatly looked forward to going to Blenheim Palace on June 3rd, but was “ordered” to Monte Carlo. As no other reporters old enough to appreciate the sight of Gothic radiators en masse were available, that was that. It may interest Mr. Bath to know that I have never once been invited to any of those cosy Daimler-Benz parties at which journalists sample the precious pre-war G.P. cars or try Uhlenhaut’s 300SLR. So the implied “bribery” behind my contention that, by the standards on which Rolls-Royce cars were judged, the modern Mercedes-Benz is now the best car in the world, falls down. But I have driven most of the Mercedes-Benz models over appreciable distances before coming to this conclusion, whereas the last R.-R. product we road-tested was a Bentley S.,series in 1956, which we found pretty lethal on wet roads, since when those at Crewe have turned their backs on MOTOR SPORT, although we have published more R.-R. material down the years than most of the other journals combined. – ED)