It was an unusual request: the caller wanted to book an inspection for his R 107-series 300 SL. Unusual, because the owner of the roadster had not simply contacted his nearest Mercedes-Benz service center, but had turned directly to the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Fellbach. The Center wasted no time in providing some friendly advice, pointing out the expertise of its colleagues at local service centers, who are just as capable of showing all due respect for Mercedes-Benz history: an R 107 is not yet that old a classic that the services of the specialists from Fellbach would be absolutely indispensable for carrying out an oil change and some standard maintenance work. Yet it was at this point that Hans Helmuth Schmidt was more specific with his request: “I mean the 1,000-kilometer inspection.” That was the deal-breaker: the first inspection for a car that was already more than twenty years old? That seemed so unbelievable that the experts in Fellbach promptly agreed.

In December 2009, Andreas Häberle, project manager at the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center, welcomed the owner of the 300 SL to Fellbach. “It’s a special car,” explains Hans Helmuth Schmidt, the owner of a specialist paints factory, itself steeped in tradition, “and if there is a special address for carrying out the very first inspection, then it has to be here.” And in the case of his blue-black roadster (color code 199), the cliché is totally appropriate: the car has not just been well looked after. In actual fact it is an R 107 in new, showroom condition. Schmidt treated himself to the 300 SL for his fiftieth birthday in 2008. At the time, an R 107 was right at the top of his wish list: “I wanted a cabriolet that is classic yet still good to drive,” he explains, “and I’ve always been fascinated by the beautiful, smooth contours of the R 107.”

A good friend from Switzerland brought this very special example to his attention during the summer vacation in 2008, and then proceeded to encourage him incessantly to go ahead and buy it. As a result, he was finally united with his 300 SL, which came from the well-known Axel Schütte classic car dealership in Oerlinghausen. When he saw the vehicle for the very first time, it had a total of 130 kilometers on the clock – not on the trip odometer, but on the total mileage clock. And there was a further bonus: the first buyer, a master baker from Hamminkeln in the Lower Rhine region, had acquired the car in June 1989 but had never registered it.

So when Hans Helmuth Schmidt had his R 107 inspected in Fellbach, it had already registered ten times the original mileage: the kilometer reading had skyrocketed to 1,252 km. Andreas Häberle therefore extended the standard points covered by the 1,000-kilometer inspection for this very rare guest: “We took the utmost care in paying particular attention to detecting and dealing with any possible non-use damage.” This applies to the brakes, for example. After removing the brake linings, Mercedes-Benz Classic Center expert Thomas Lämmle not only checked the clearance of all of the pistons. He also changed the brake fluid and swapped out all of the brake hoses, even if they showed no signs of wear and tear: “We tend to err on the side of caution in such cases,” explains Häberle.

You will find more background information about the 1,000 kilometer inspection of Hans Schmidt’s R 107 in the current issue of Mercedes-Benz Classic.