Shark01
GT Owner
Fantastic, we have two Siberian cats....had no idea this was such a great resource
Welcome OP, unfortunately all I know about Switzerland are watches. Enjoy your Dad's gift
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- Thread starter Hirschy
- Start date
Fantastic, we have two Siberian cats....had no idea this was such a great resource
Welcome OP, unfortunately all I know about Switzerland are watches. Enjoy your Dad's gift
ByeEnzo
GT
Stef
GT Owner
twobjshelbys
GT Owner
Welcome. Sorry for your loss. You obviously kept the greatest car, but what other cars were in the collection?
Thank you very much. My dad had a taste for "different" cars. He liked special cars, but nothing which was too in your face flashy. He was an understated gentleman type of owner/driver. He had mainly Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin and McLaren products. His favorite cars were the Mercedes SLR's. He had 3 of them and was an avid member of the SLR club, rarely ever missing an event. His favorite car to drive was his 2009 SLR 722s that he put almost 30k kilometers on, almost all of which were with the SLR club doing spirited drives across Europe with track days breaking up the drives. I really wanted to keep that car more than any of them, as he truly loved and enjoyed it. I tried for over two years to import it, even with the help of the MB factory, but to no avail, it simply was not possible. Letting that one go recently really hurt. For any of you thinking about "investing" in an SLR (because there are plenty of guys claiming these are great investments) don't let the hyped up asking prices for this car fool you,. You don't get anywhere near the numbers that other SLR collectors claim these things are worth. It sold for exactly half what my father told me it was "worth" after being listed with 3 different world class car brokers, ouch!
Anyway, thanks for you message and for your kind words.
Side note - joining here has been really nice. I've been a member of various car clubs over the years, but I can't remember ever getting such a nice welcome. Thank you all!
2112
Blue/white 06'
Spaceman
GT Owner
The main issue was getting a replacement gauge cluster. Standard SLR clusters are already very difficult to get, but they only made enough 722 clusters to complete the production run. The story goes McLaren was kind enough to destroy all of the tooling for SLR after some kind of fight with MB, meaning no replacement parts can be made. I was told this is why you can't get replacement parts for SLR of any kind really. Mercedes Benz told me my only option was to wait for another 722 to get totaled, and then hope to be able to buy the cluster out of that car. You can imagine the likelihood of that happening.
The only other option for importing the car would have been as "show and display" but I was advised against going that route due to the driving restrictions imposed on this status, as well as it being impossible to remove this branding from the title in the event that I ever did sell it, thereby destroying whatever value it did have. Long story long, it simply did not make sense to keep the car.
2112
Blue/white 06'
jr66
GT Owner
Great story. Welcome and enjoy your car. I used to live in MN. My cars had a short driving season.
Chris A.
GT #32
This is located in the garage in Switzerland, so I will request some photos and specs for the lift for you. I asked to have the car documented with photos prior to shipping it last week and these were some of what they took of the car before it was picked up.Welcome!
I WANT THAT LIFT
If you have a photo handy I'd like to see it "up".
SYCO GT
GT Owner
Welcome to the GT family and forum. Looking forward to meeting you and hearing more wonderful stories and history.