My brothers and I grew up on various car review shows and car restoration shows. Those shows inspired us to work on our own car projects such as my brother’s 1970 Datsun 510 and my 1974 Datsun 260Z. One lesson we learned is that everything works out perfectly on the TV shows with no glitches and they always forget to mention the delays. For those of you who are into car restoration stories, you might enjoy the video produced by Mercedes-Benz TV.
The project is based around a on-off 1938 540 K Streamliner. In 2001, a Mercedes-Benz employee found mysterious auto parts in a warehouse which turned out to be extremely rare. The find was such a big deal to the company that they decided to restore the vehicle, even if they had to use parts that no longer existed.
Using the archives, they got to work and started to reproduce all the parts needed for the project but things were not so simple. Mercedes-Benz wanted to use the same manufacturing techniques used back in the late 1930s. That meant using the technical skills, methods, and materials of the period from which the vehicle originates.
The vehicle was originally built to participate in the long-distance race from Berlin to Rome. The Mercedes-Benz 540 K Streamliner was built around a lightweight aluminum body shell using a wind tunnel for design purposes and powered by a 5.4-liter inline eight-cylinder supercharged engine producing 177 horsepower. The Streamliner was based on the production model of the 540 K but was faster thanks to the lightweight aluminum shell.
If you’ve got 45 minutes to spare, enjoy the story of the Mercedes-Benz 540 K Streamliner restoration project.
Mercedes-Benz 540 K Streamliner
