TEAM ADVENTURE
Ian Tisdale’s ‘Heckmotor’ was made in 1934, so every day is an adventure
My wife Kirsten’s early appraisal of our little rear-engined Mercedes-Benz W23 130, was pragmatic: ‘Not so much a continent-crosser,’ she’d observed, ‘as something to take down to the pub?’ Plainly not impressed, then, and ‘pedestrian’ was another description that I seem to recall. Well, we’ve had the little chap for about four years now – our first Mercedes-Benz and DaimlerBenz’s first car with less than six cylinders – and it’s taken that long to get fully to grips with it.
It presents well, just as it did when it arrived from Vienna in a double-deck transporter during the first lock-down, to be unloaded as close as CARS’ big artic could get, a lay-by a mile from our house. It had spent over two decades in a German museum after a thorough resto but, while generating a few PC Staff Car Saga bulletins from time to time, its commissioning has been quite prolonged. Probably, a crucial difference from many people’s projects, though, is that it’s been a rolling process, with the old car in regular use from the off, despite a number of issues, and attending quite a few high-profile events to which we’ve driven, not trailered it.
Now, stories generally start at the beginning – ‘once upon a time’ – but let me celebrate the end of this one first, because I think we’ve pretty well cracked it, at last! And, embarrassingly, the final bit of the jig-saw was me learning how to drive the thing properly, all the more surprising when a lifetime in commercial transport has left me able to cope with the likes of an Eaton 12-speed Twin-splitter, and even helicopters. The little Mercedes’s gear-shift sequence starts with a dog-leg first, one of three conventional unsynchronised forward gears, third being direct-drive, and a semi-automatic overdrive fourth that’s selected by moving the lever sideways to the right and forward, without going via neutral or using the clutch.
I had read the English-language handbook carefully when we got the car – I’ve even got two copies of it – but discovered only the day before driving to 2024’s PC Classic Car and Restoration Show that I’d still not been using that overdrive correctly.
In my defence, there are different descriptions on the so often dodgy Internet. It had somehow seemed appropriate to ease off the accelerator while making that clutchless up-shift, but no, it’s best to think of it as a pre-selector. If you keep the pedal down while shifting, nothing happens until you come off the throttle, either straightaway or at your leisure, whereupon overdrive just clicks nicely in, with no need to blip the throttle or touch
