| Part 2: The Mercedes Museum I was in Germany on a beer drinking expedition and got a chance to roll through the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart. There was so much on display it took a few hours just to go through briefly much less do the whole audio tour/extended explanation stuff. Apologies for the quality, this was back in 2008 and the camera I had at the time was already a few years old then. That and I are not good at camera. 
Stuff from the really early days of the automobile is very cool because there is so much variety in every aspect of the design. Anything went if you could get it to work. Leather drive belts, tiller steering wheels, wood spokes, steam power, anything you could cobble together. 
Exposed cam shafts are just that much easier to service. I think that's what that is anyway. 
I took this because I thought getting 5.8hp/L was pretty good for 1902. Though at that rate the non-turbo Z would have had a 37.6 liter engine. That's going to be a little nose heavy. 
If I'm looking at this right these are all the engine accessories (water pump, alternator, etc) driven off a common shaft. 
180mph in 1955. Amazing. On bias ply tires too. Scary. Unfortunately it never got developed beyond this because one of the racing versions of the 300 SLR was involved in the tragedy at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans. Driver Pierre Levegh crashed into another car, flew off the track into a grand stand and 83 people were killed. Mercedes didn't field a factory motorsport team for 30 years after that. 
Mercedes was rockin the stretched look before anyone even knew it was cool. 
And now, the good stuff. 
The scale is hard to show but this thing is the size of a large watermelon. 
Carbon ceramic brake disc. This is now officially pornography. 
This is either the '99 or 2000 car. I stood there and stared at this thing for at least half an hour. 
Each one of those little placards has a little transponder that you point your audio book thing at and it gives you a 1-3 minute explanation of whatever you're looking at. It would probably take two days to get through everything in the museum. 
That's damn sexy. 
I should have said at the beginning that brakes are my secret fetish. 
The CLK GTR. Enough to make you have a crisis. 
Then I naturally went back and drooled over the F1 car some more. 
So yeah, if you find yourself in Stuttgart one day definitely go check it out.
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