blueSL

Even though I do not have an R129 any more, I've found a book which for me is a must-have and gives an unusually detailed account of the R129 development history. It's called Mercedes-Benz SL280-SL600 - Vom Mythos zur Offenbarung. You'll need to brush up your German to get the best from it but there are copious diagrams and photographs from which anyone can glean a huge amount of information. The picture attached to this post shows the engineer who, 20 years ago, designed the folding soft top and hard top mechanism. Clever man. Below that is a picture of the development test rig for the hard top locking mechanism. The book is full of stuff like this.

What's especially interesting is that you can see a number of dates throughout the book. This page talks about the development of the philosophy of the roof starting with an early concept statement in 1982, fully 7 years before the car was launched. Keep in mind that at that time, we barely had the IBM PC, Windows were something you opened to let air in. It makes the development of the R129 all the more impressive and ties in with a statement from the development team at launch that this car was the most difficult thing Mercedes-Benz had ever done.

With modern computing design and visualisation techniques, it' a whole lot easier now but the R129 will always stand as a technical achievement ahead of its time.

The book is available from the Merceces-Benz museum in Untertuerkheim, Stuttgart.

SL60 ///AMG

And the front page is like the picture. I have the book but I don´t understand german However, there is some nice pictures, and as a resource for technical stuff - I´ts worth gold, and it cost like that too :p

RUCKDR

1 picture is worth a 1000 words, unless it is German , then a picture is worth ALL the words.

blueSL

Yes, I guess German does not figure highly in US high school syllabuses. It is quite amusing to hear Americans trying to make themselves understood in Europe...