I couldn’t have been more than five years old, maybe six, when I got a ride in my first sports car. It was white, with a black hardtop, red interior, and had a stick shift. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, more than half a century later.
The car belonged to a friend of my Aunt Kiki, and it may, in fact, have helped turn me into a lifelong sports car freak.
The car was a Mercedes-Benz 190 SL, and as opposed to some in the collector car world today, I do consider this a sports car. I love the way these cars look—the voluptuous curves of the fenders, the taillights, and the front grille. And I love its raspy little exhaust note.
There is something just so correct about a 190 SL’s proportions. Soon after my ride in the Mercedes, my dad bought me a Dinky Toy of the same car, and I was smitten for life.
Years went by, and in that time, I’d owned nearly every sports car made: MGTD, MGB, MG Midget, Triumph Spitfire, Porsche 356, Porsche Carrera S, Corvette Sting Ray, Sunbeam Tiger, AC Cobra, Datsun 240 Z, even a Cunningham C3, and many others. I loved them all. But there was always a void in my automotive bucket list.
Until a few months ago.
My passion since I was about 14 years old has been to discover barn-find cars, the kind hidden away in barns, warehouses, garages, fields, and the ones forgotten altogether. I’ve written a number of books about the subject, and I’m always on the prowl for old cars and motorcycles as subjects for my next book.
Having been driven and parked inside a metal building 20 years earlier, I was lucky enough to negotiate the purchase of this Mercedes 190 SL. It is similar to the very first sports car I rode in as a kindergartener. TOM COTTER
Last fall, I was in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, where I heard an urban legend: a guy named Steve Davis supposedly had hundreds of old cars, and thousands of old motorcycles. It sounded like a dream come true, and I had to visit.
The car was mechanically sound, but it now requires much metal work because of rust cancer. Luckily the purchase included all the metal repair panels. It is now undergoing restoration. TOM COTTER
Steve was a heck of a nice fellow, and told me he had been picking and collecting since he was a kid. He also told me he didn’t usually sell anything, but he’d be glad to show me his fields and barns stocked with old cars—Fords, Studebakers, many old Jaguars, MGs, Volvos, and more. But in one of his buildings, stored in a nice, dry corner, was a car that caught my attention: a dusty 190 SL.
Steve told me it was a 1955, and that he had last driven it over 20 years ago. I said I’d be interested in buying it if he’d part with it, and he said yes, but only if I gave him signed copies of each of my books.
No brainer. He named his price, and we shook hands on it.
Later, a friend of Steve’s named Eugene Smyre picked up the car and is now restoring it for me. Eugene is no newcomer to the area of restoration, having restored, among others, the Mormon Meteor that won best of show at Pebble Beach and Amelia Island a few years ago.
So here I am, at 59 years old, about to be spiritually reunited with a car that turned me into a sports car junkie so long ago. I imagine the ride will be just as memorable!