Driving the Mercedes ‘Beetle’

Dan Trent writes:
Driving old cars is always an experience. And the three rear-engined Mercedes I drove for the ‘Did Mercedes invent the Beetle?’ story were all marvellous things and brilliant fun to drive.

The 170H – the most modern of the three – was the most refined and easy to drive. And the 150H the most dramatic, thanks to its sporty looks and open cockpit. Who, incidentally, would have thought Mercedes was the first to market with a bright red, mid-engined sports car eh?

But my favourite was the 130. It was the oldest, most basic and, with 26hp, by far the slowest of the three. But when you’re driving old cars like this obsessions with 0-62mph times are of less importance than soul and how it makes you feel.

The inside of the 130 was pretty Spartan, with even the gear and pedal linkages exposed. But it had been beautifully restored and everything worked with incredible precision.

The four-cylinder engine was smooth and responsive too, even if the gearbox took a little getting used to. First was down and to the left – dog-leg as it’s known – second up and right and third straight back. Fourth? Don’t touch the clutch and from third move the stick right and up, back off the throttle, wait for the clunk and there you go.

Even at the time Mercedes was well aware of the handling quirks of rear engined cars, an internal memo at the time noting the “poor road-holding ability of the rear-engine car” and that senior engineers “harboured the gravest concerns for the vehicle”. Another engineer later noted in his memoirs that “after carefully tuning tyre and spring softness … we created a serviceable vehicle out of what was initially a rather stubborn mule.”

I’ve got to say, they must have got it right because the 130 handled pretty sweetly as far as I could tell. Quirky, characterful but almost forgotten entirely, these rare little cars were an absolute treat to drive.

Oh, and fans of a certain fictional online motoring hack will be amused by the quotes from German roadtester Joseph Ganz who, writing of the 130 in 1934, said “In order to test the full potential of the rear-engine car I drove on the snowy and at times icy tracks … the four-day old snow was still virginal. Only on one occasion did the car deviate by a few degrees from the intended direction – the result of a snowdrift – but I was immediately able to bring it back on track again.”