The older I get the less is my inclination to believe in coincidence. Maybe that is due to devout skepticism about such things or simply how everything in life seems to be so intertwined with something else.
Regardless, coincidences just don’t seem to be a thing. For instance…
Downtown Cape Girardeau in 1965; found on Pinterest
We recently visited family in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The trip was for a Christmas celebration, a tardy event that winter storms had twice postponed. It is no coincidence winter storms inevitably happen on weekends and around the various holidays in January and February.
Along the way Mrs. Jason asked if I had recently talked to Frank, a high school friend.
No, it had been about two years.
A day or two after we returned home Frank contacted me. He was going to be in Jefferson City later in the week.
Coincidence? Nope.
from www.visitjeffersoncity.com
After lunch and a tour of Jefferson City, Frank and I visited the Missouri State Highway Patrol museum. A selfie of us he took and posted on social media elicited one classmate to comment how she had not seen me since the day we graduated in 1990 and she had recently been wondering where I was.
Coincidence? Me thinks not.
The now retired Dodge in the parade at the Missouri State Fair
As an automotive aside, the museum has this 1959 Dodge Coronet we featured long ago (here it is). The Patrol had purchased this Dodge new and reacquired it in 1979, restoring it during the 1990s for public outreach assignments. A museum docent said the Dodge had developed reliability problems and had to be pushed across the finish line in a few parades.
I suppose that old 383 didn’t like loafing along. The Patrol likely figured this was not a good look, so the Dodge was retired to the museum.
In turn, the Mustang at the museum was un-retired and placed into the public outreach role the Dodge had been playing.
Sadly, the 1978 Mercury Marquis also found in the museum is still on static display only, although the keys are in the ignition…
I digress.
During lunch, Frank was surprised upon my recent reacquaintance with someone we both knew.
That prior weekend, while visiting a family member at a nursing home in Cape, I heard a familiar voice from long ago. This voice belonged to Miss Flossie, a teacher from elementary school. She was visiting her sister who also lives at the facility, so this meeting was no freak coincidence.
It was great talking to Miss Flossie. Heck, I had not seen her in years. She looked great, although I felt old when she told me her younger son’s age. I vividly remember her being pregnant with him. Time flies.
Seeing Miss Flossie was an unusual reminder how I had pictures of this Heckflosse, specifically one of the Mercedes W110 series.
Finding this 190D wasn’t a random, coincidental encounter. It was in the parking lot where I work, seemingly waiting for me. Perhaps it knew I had been trying to capture pictures of it for over a decade. Long ago I found it at home with a traffic cone on its roof and that picture can be found in these pages…somewhere. So, one day last summer when I needed to stretch and get some fresh air, I stepped outside to be greeted by this old girl.
As a lifelong Midwesterner, we tend to like our cars like we do our liquor – domestic branded. American cars are as common around her as oxygen, with a wise man once observing how one cannot sling a dead cat in these parts without it bouncing off a GM product.
In these parts seeing any European car of this vintage is rare enough to almost be considered a life-altering event. Even the seemingly evergreen Mercedes W123 is only spotted around here maybe once or twice annually. I find this somewhat intriguing given the profound amount of German ancestry in the area, as towns named Hermann, Frankenstein, and Rhineland can all be visited within an hour.
The W110 was derived from the six cylinder W111 220S/SE (above), which was introduced in the fall of 1959; for perspective, this is when Xerox introduced the first plain paper copier.
The W110 sedan was about the same size as American compacts of the time, such as this Rambler Classic. There’s a certain degree of similarity there. in basic shape size and…flossen.
The W110 began production in June 1961. Four-cylinder engines were their only power plant whereas the W111 had six-cylinder engines and a two inch longer wheelbase. The cabins are identically sized.
While the W110 is a derivative of the W111, it wasn’t a facsimile, either. The most obvious difference was the front end, which was longer on the W110 (top), with the additional wheelbase and an extended front end in of the front wheels.
The W110 four cylinder cars had a simpler as well as shorter front end, with single headlights.
The W111, seen further up, had vertical headlights that were vastly different in appearance. It should be noted American market cars (above) have four round headlight bulbs, thus presenting differently from the European (and likely other market) versions.
Interior appointments were similar, although some concessions were made for the lower cost W110. For instance, adjustable seat backs and rear arm rests were standard on the W111 but optional on the W110. The W110 received interior door handles recycled from earlier models.
Not the featured car, this was found on the web
Another commonality was the speedometer. While the scale differed among the various series of models, it seems this unit was found to be hard to read by owners.
The 190D has a 55 (or 60, depending upon source) horsepower 2.0 L diesel engine, so a poster child of rapidity it is not. A Dutch website about the Heckflosse states the top speed of a 190D with a manual transmission was 130 km/hr (just under 81 mph) and it could reach 100 km/hr (62 mph) in 29 seconds with a manual transmission. The automatic was even pokier. One can only imagine how this may be influenced by headwinds or cross breezes.
The gasoline powered W110, the 190, was a whopping 11 seconds quicker to 100 km/hr and reported to be 20 km/hr faster on the top end.
Skip the police part; this shows the stretched nose
In learning about the relationship between the W110 and W111, my mind started racing. For whatever reason, I realized these two could be a German counterpoint to the intertwined AMC Matador (or Rebel) and Ambassador. Those two also had the exact same body shell yet the wheelbase differed, with the length also being in front of the firewall. To be fair, this extra length was less pronounced on the Mercedes than it was on the AMC. Further, the Mercedes was more of a nose reduction whereas the Ambassador was Pinocchio’d.
While this picture is from 1973, the Ambassador had been given a beak extension for years by the 1960s. Even when the Ambassador carried a Nash badge, it was longer in the front than the lower cost model.
Another similarity with the AMC was the longer version being more upmarket with the shorter being downmarket. In some parts of the world, a Mercedes is taxi fodder. The W110 covered that market with a fair amount of taxi use.
It was far more successful in that endeavor than was the AMC.
The featured 190D was the more popular of the two W110 offerings with 225,000 examples built from 1961 to 1965. The companion 190 saw 130,000 being built.
My earlier automotive aside was no coincidence; it was a buildup to help provide a point of comparison, especially for those calibrated to American cars and sales volumes. To put things in perspective, Mercury built 121,000 Marquis’ in 1978. Ford built 211,000 Mustangs in 1988.
So if one wants to get all geeky about it, the Mercedes 190 is about as populous as a 1978 Mercury Marquis.
From bringatrailer.com
The 1988 Mustang was just a shade less populous than the diesel powered 190D.
Total production of the W110 was around 355,000. For further comparison for that time period, that is only 12,000 more than the production volume for all body styles of the 1963 Ford Fairlane. That is a random choice for comparison (based upon the page my reference opened to), but it’s close and, hopefully, illustrative. The point is to provide perspective that production volumes in Europe at that time were simply different than in the United States, something us Amerikaners can easily forget.
Perhaps this was an unorthodox way of providing perspective, but perspective is always good.
My sightings of this 190D were frequent a decade ago, but, like Miss Flossie, I have not seen this Flosse in years. I’m really hoping this sighting is no coincidence.
Found July 2024 in Jefferson City, Missouri
Related Reading:
Automotive History: W110/111/112 Fintails by Don Andreina
1967 Mercedes W110 – The Spy Who Lurked Me by Tatra87
CC’s Professore Andreina tried, valiantly and eruditely, to defend the aesthetics of these in the magnificent treatise linked just above, and just as gloriously, he failed. Even with his delightfully-described “Faberge egg” front lights of the non-US upper models.
Truth is, these things are nearly the ugliest bastards of the time, and amongst those of all time, outdone perhaps only by the grotesquery of the that Rambler, which is without doubt one of the highs of stylistic lowness.
If, as reported here, those Mercs failed to thrive and multiply in the deep Midwest, I wouldn’t (for once) blame an insular mentality seemingly unaware that there’s a whole world that mightn’t think their way – in fact, I’d praise as being right those who said “Well, we do this style here in America, only much better, and faster, and WAY less expensive, so why would we?”
This remains: whether or not it’s a coincidence, it’s truly incredible that you espied such an ancient in apparent regular local employment in 2024. That’s coincident with something like a miracle.
You are such a ray of sunshine this morning!
But I realize we do share one thing, despite my apparent “insular mentality”, which is we are both practitioners of hyperbole. Glad to see you are on top of your game.
It wasn’t directed at you personally, but it was unnecessarily uncivil. It was the by-product of a sleepless night, one of those where the world weighs on the gloom.
Thankyou for the graciousness of your response.
Oh my, but that poor old thing is suffering from a nasty case of the rusties.
I have always found these more intriguing than appealing. I love the idea of the taut structures and the way the whole package was under the control of the engineers. But boy are these things slow. If I want an engineer designed car that is really slow, I think I would drift to a Fluid Drive six cylinder Chrysler or DeSoto from the 40s, which is both bigger and easier/cheaper to fix when something fails.
It is funny how you can see some cars multiple times over an extended period while others are seen once and never again.
I never knew there was such a thing as a “190C” variation until reading CC. The badging on the cars themselves just said 190 and 190D. You were expected to know the 190 was a gasoline engine, I guess.
Or you could go by the lack of soot on the rear end of the 190.
Actually, it should be a lower case “c” and that was an internal code that applied to both gas and diesel versions. This is technically a 190Dc; the gas version was a 190c, but the “c” was not used on their external badges. They’re commonly known as 190D and 190 (for the gas version). I’ve edited out the “C” as it is confusing.
Thank you.
The nomenclature of these is interesting, or at least what is printed elsewhere is. Among the information I found, there was use of “190”, “190c”, “190Dc”, “190D”, and “190d”.
That poor car is almost as old as me.My rust isn’t so apparent. Still feel its there though.
Know the feeling ;-), but apparently my condition is consistent “with age and mileage”
The parents of my best friend in junior high and high school had a gray 190 (gasoline) with supremely comfortable red leather seats and 4 on the tree. I spent a lot of time in the back seat when I was younger, and even a few miles behind the wheel after I got my license. It was a roomy and comfortable car but made my own parents’ Volvo 122 station wagon feel like a sports car.
“The 190D has a 55 (or 60, depending upon source) horsepower 2.0 L diesel engine …”
The diesel engine used in the 200D (W110) was the OM 621 engine. It always produced 55 hp.
The 60 hp diesel engine was the OM 615. However, this was not available until 1968 in the successor model, the W115, with a 2.2-liter displacement.
The W115 also featured a two-liter version of the OM 615. This version, like its predecessor, the OM621, also produced 55 hp.Two-liter diesel engines with 60 hp came in the mid 70s with the W123 series.
I always liked the flashers (turn signals) on top of the wings near the windscreen on these.
In Britain at that time period people were replacing their cars semaphores with bubble type flashers like these. It seemed odd to me that a car maker my father so revered and aspired to, but could never afford, would have such a similar feature.
From MY 1965 onwards, the indicator warts disappeared from the fenders and the turn signals moved into separate housings below the headlights (see image).