60 years ago Mercedes-Benz defined a new era of luxury cars with its behemoth 600. Glen Waddington drives the choice of celebs and despots
Photography Dino Eisele / Mercedes-Benz Heritage
IT’S SIGNIFICANT that my passenger is Marcus Breitschwerdt. Not only because he is the boss of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, but because, as he says himself: ‘I am the son of an engineer, the brother of an engineer – and a nephew of an engineer.’ His uncle was the late Werner Breitschwerdt, a key member of the team that developed the Mercedes-Benz 600 and who went on in 1983 to become Chairman of the Board of Management of the whole company. ‘We wanted to build a car that could do everything that was possible, and we wanted it to be able to do more than any other car, for the driver and the passenger,’ he said of the 600, shortly before he stepped down from that role in the late 1980s.
Marcus Breitschwerdt displays equally obvious pride. ‘It has a 250bhp V8, so it was as fast as a Porsche 911 yet also capable of carrying passengers in great comfort. It has power-assisted brakes, with dual calipers, so you can drive it quickly because you can also slow down in a short distance. There is air suspension, and high-pressure hydraulics move the windows, the seats, even the boot-lid. It was built for a very long life, so it is very strong and very safe.’
We are heading out of Stuttgart, away from the Mercedes-Benz Museum towards the nearby town of Schorndorf, birthplace of Gottlieb Daimler, founder of one of the two pioneering companies that merged in 1926 to become Daimler-Benz AG. You can find out more about Marcus Breitschwerdt and Daimler’s childhood home in the following article, as well as the impact Daimler’s background had on the direction Mercedes-Benz is now taking. For now, we relax serenely at cruising speed, noting the exceptional calm of the big Merc’s ride, the ease with which its 6.3-litre V8 dispatches the kilometres, the accuracy of its steering, its arrow-like directional stability, the comforting embrace of its seat, and that the general silence is only remotely pierced by the merest flutter of air moving past the upright windscreen pillars. The thing feels bulletproof, as many 600s actually were.
On which subject (and we’ll get this out of the way first): the 600 was known for its appeal among some of the less celebrated political leaders of times past. The list includes Brezhnev, Ceauşescu, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao… Doubtless the appointments and refinement appealed, but there’s no doubting a bulletproof car that was capable of getting out of its own way
