Lincoln
Churchill
David McCullough
Peter Egan
Smokey Yunick

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Ok, I'll throw in a few more women for ya:
Admiral Grace Hopper (hey, I'm an IT guy!)
Jeane Kirkpatrick
of course the Iron Lady
Aung San Suu Kyi
Rose Friedman (and her husband)
Mary, mother of Jesus (think of the discussions of her life of service and of her young son growing up)
Hillary Clinton (I disagree with her on many things, but I'd like to sit down and talk with her and see if I could better understand what she wanted to do and why)
Molly Brown
Maybe some intelligent Nevada prositute (since legalizing prositution comes up now and again, it might be enlightening to hear about it from someone really close to the issue).
probably best to meet with most of them on different nights.

Ron White
Frank Sinatra
Al Capone
My uncle Tom
Terry Francona
Ben Franklin

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

lotsa folks, some of whom are

Gabriel García Márquez
John Wesley Powell
Ruth Benedict
P.Teilhard de Chardin
Martin Litton
Ellen Page
Allan Watts
Francisco Villa
Emiliano Zapata
Cesar Chavez
My parents

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You're a daisy if you do.
__________________________________
84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

John Lennon
Huey Long
Jimmy Hoffa
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

John Galt

Godot, but he's always late

__________________
You're a daisy if you do.
__________________________________
84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

"Dinner" should be interesting

__________________
Current:
1985 300D aka Miss Margaret
1991 300SE aka Alarice
1995 SL320 aka Samantha
1997 K1500 Silverado
Past:
1999 E300 ex-wife got it and let her son ruin it
1984 190 2.3 ex-wife got it and let her son destroy a great car
1985 300D (CA version) aka Maybelline lost to deer at high speed.
1981 300D aka Madeline (went to salvage at near 400k) rusty, yet best car I ever drove
Wishlist:
McFarlan TV6 (only a few privately owned)
ReVere with Rochester engine
1917 Premier (only one left)

Churchill
WC Fields
Marx Brothers
Rosalind Russell
Mae West
Alfred Hitchcock
(I am sure at some point the police will be called with this group.)

__________________
Current:
1985 300D aka Miss Margaret
1991 300SE aka Alarice
1995 SL320 aka Samantha
1997 K1500 Silverado
Past:
1999 E300 ex-wife got it and let her son ruin it
1984 190 2.3 ex-wife got it and let her son destroy a great car
1985 300D (CA version) aka Maybelline lost to deer at high speed.
1981 300D aka Madeline (went to salvage at near 400k) rusty, yet best car I ever drove
Wishlist:
McFarlan TV6 (only a few privately owned)
ReVere with Rochester engine
1917 Premier (only one left)

I’ve met a number of fairly successful people and only a few I’ve met were really great people, as opposed to being very successful, famous and conceited beyond their fame. Due in part to that, i was never much for the cult of celebrity.

One person I know who is both famous and a 3x Academy Award winner, and very influential in my artistic work the last few years would be fun to spend some time with, and I hope to actually meet the fellah at some point, but we’ve chatted in writing many times over cyber space. I traded web posts with the guy for about 2 years before I learned of his nefarious past. The guy is an endless fountain of technical knowledge and a genuinely happy person.

Never really understood why so many get sucked into the cult of celebrity. Most celebrities I've met are not even slightly friendly towards strangers, and many have in semi-private moments expressed cold contempt for their adoring public. I can only guess as to why.

Who is?

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'07 Yukon 2500
'13 Subaru Outback 3.6R
'13 Orbea Carpe 9-speed

Currently Benzless
Formerly: 300TD, S600, E55, 560SEL

---= The forest breathes, listen.
-Native American elder

Pope Leo I
Pope Leo XIII
Julius Caesar
Caesar Augustus
Leonardo da Vinci
Andre Lefebvre
Andre Citroen
Voltaire
Henry II of England
William Shakespeare
Ulysses S. Grant

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Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

Peter Egan wrote of a grand dinner that Mercedes Benz had organized for the reopening of the Nurburgring circuit.

Lions, Young and Otherwise

by Peter Egan

It was one of those evenings when you look around yourself and say, “Well, if the roof collapses or I get hit by lightning, at least I can die happy.”

We were dining at a grand old German restaurant in the Eifel Mountains, not far from the Nurbrurgring, perhaps 150 of us, divided into rough thirds as journalists, Mercedes-Benz officials and famous racing drivers.

A lot of famous racing drivers.

More, in fact, than I had ever hoped to see in the chance meetings of a lifetime, much less sitting down to dinner in a single room. Half the heroes of my protracted, ongoing childhood were there. Casting aside all civilized restraint and the usual social taboos against name dropping, I’ll describe it.

Phil Hill sat across from me, and over his shoulder I could see Denis Hulme and Jack Brabham at the next table. Niki Lauda and James Hunt stood out from the sea of dark evening dress – Lauda with his trademark red cap and Hunt, whose luggage had failed to arrive, in a plum colored corduroy sport coat and blue jeans. Moss chatted with Surtees nearby, whle Prost, Rosberg and Reutemann looked on.

Behind me, the camaraderie was all in German stories and laughter coming from a gathering of pre-war Mercedes greats that included Karl Kling, Hermann Lang and Manfred Von Brauchitsch (on leave from East Germany) and their wives and friends. At the other table nearby were those grand gentlemen of racing, Rene Dreyfus, Piero Taruffi and none other than Juan Manuel Fangio himself, looking very sleek and tanned. There were others I no doubt missed, lost in the clouds of after dinner cigar smoke. John Watson was supposed to be somewhere in the crowd, and Jody Scheckter, whose name card and place setting lay unclaimed beside my own, was reported to be late with airline problems.

The effect, especially after a couple of glasses of Crozes-Hermitage (81er), was slightly heady and unreal, like dining in the midst of a photo montage come to life; the racing counterpart of a Hollywood poster that purports to show Monroe, Bogart, James Dean, Mae West and the Marx Brothers all standing in the same crowd. That, or a little like sitting down to the Last Supper with the original Twelve, Fangio getting my vote for center seat; a sort of baroque Upper Room with candles, cut glass, brandy and real Cuban cigars.

Why, you ask, was all this driving talent concentrated under one roof?

Mercedes-Benz, never a company to work in half measures, had invited the drivers for the opening of the new Nurburgring and the introduction of the 16-valve Cosworth headed Mercedes 190E 2.3-16 (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), thereby killing two birds with dozens of stones and hundreds of thousands of Deutsche Mark. Mercedes was sponsoring what was essentially a showroom stock race of the Cosworth 190’s around the new Ring. Twenty of these great drivers would be pitted against one another in a 12 lap race during Sunday’s opening ceremonies. It was ostensibly just an exhibition race, but in Saturday’s practice the drivers were clearly taking it seriously. Not one of these men had become a racing legend because he liked following other cars around the race track.

At Saturday night’s dinner, a young journalist asked Phil Hill if he were “really going to try hard tomorrow.” The color rose in Hill’s face and he said, “Of course I’m going to try tomorrow. Are you kidding? I was driving my tail off in practice today. I still can’t figure out how Prost is going so fast . . .”


History recalls that some new driver named Senna beat Lauda the next day.

Among the lesser-known:

Ernst and Frieda Bisiu
Ricardo and Isadora Subo
Sydney Chooch
William Daprato
John Houseman
Vernon Walter

__________________
Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

MBZ'er
RichC
Petra
Kirk Vining
Air & Road...