I gew up in the 60's in Saginaw, MI, which was then home to numerous GM plants and headquarters of both Saginaw Steering Gear and Central Foundry divisions of General Motors. Obviously, funny little furrin cars weren't common; in fact, aside from VW, anything foreign was very rare and exotic. A good friend was the son of the chief metallurgist at Central Foundry and told me a story on his dad when mine bought a Mercedes in 1969. He, along with four other senior engineers at GM, was driving a Benz from Detroit to Saginaw, where they were going to look at it closely to see what the Germans were doing; by the timing, it would have been a 108, probably a 250SE. A fine summer thunderstorm popped up, and they spent the duration under an overpass; five graduate-level engineers developing our Chevys, Buicks etc. couldn't figure out how to turn the windshield wipers on!

__________________
Craig Bethune

'97 SL500, 40th anniversary edition

'04 Olds Bravada (SWMBO's)
'06 Lexus ES330
'89 560SL (sold)


SL--Anything else is just a Mercedes.
(Kudos to whoever said it first)