Why can’t all EVs look this good?
Hi everybody, it’s Richard from Electric Classic Cars and in this week’s episode it’s all about the Mercedes 190L. Let’s get into it. [Applause] Now, the 190 SL and its brother, the massive 300SL supercar, were designed by the same guy and were in production from around about I think it was uh mid 1950s through to around about 1963. But although they look fairly similar, there’s not much similarities going on underneath when you compare the 190 SL to the 300SL because the 300SL is a true sports car. That’s like 250 horsepowers designed on lemon winning technology. This had a 1.9 L asmatic 4 cylinder engine in and was designed on the W121 which was a kind of boring looking sedan at the time. So this is not a sports car. So nothing to do with the Lotus in the background. However, the reason why Tim’s brought the Lotus is cuz I want to challenge Tim to how long it’s going to take me to put the roof up on the 190 SL compared to what 1990s technology. So, I don’t know how many years difference that is, but I’m assuming engineering technologies improved over the years uh of putting roofs up compared to 1950 technology, but we don’t know. So, we’re gonna find out. Okay. So, I’m pretty sure that Tim in his Lotus Elise would beat me around a track with me driving the 190 SL, but that’s not what this is all about. We’re in Wales. Presently, it’s sunny. 10 minutes time, it’s going to be pouring down with rain. So, the most important thing today is how quick can we get the roof up on our cars? Has 40 years of development and technology and evolution in convertible roofs improved the amount of time it takes to get up the roof. So Tim, you’re going to have to come over here. Have you got a timing mechanism? I got my timer. Right. So, how confident are you that you’re going to beat me putting the roof up in your your Lotus? I’m not confident at all. You couldn’t have picked. Well, you have picked the best thing if you wanted to beat me on something with a Lotus. The roof assembly time is going to be the one that you’ll Okay. So, the excuses are coming out already is what you’re saying. That’s right. Okay. So, starting positions ready. Yeah. Steady. Start the clock. Right. Okay. Go. Right. So, the first thing I got to do is I’ve got to take this cover off here. Uh I think it’s called a tono cover. uh little held on with poppers [Music] to reveal the roof which comes up like that and attaches with a couple of clips. Uh there’s one on this pillar, one in the middle, and one on this. Oh, that one didn’t go on. There we go. Stop the clock. Well, yours was 40 what? 43 seconds. I think I’ll call that a win. Uh, I’ve only just got it out the boot. I haven’t even brought it broke into a sweat. You’re knackered watching your mates, bud. How long’s this? You haven’t even put anything up yet. I think we might have to do a bit of fast forwarding. I think we’ll have to get comfortable here, SP. Let’s go and get a chair and watch him. Well, I think that’s a definite win uh for 1950s roof technology. It’s like watching uh really old man put up a one of those old tents or one of those deck chairs back in the day. So, what exactly are you putting up there? Because that doesn’t look like a roof to me. It is. That’s They’re called the can rails. The can rails? Yeah. Really? Who came up with that name? Do you know what? I think I’m going to get a Should we get a cup of tea, SP? I’m going to get a cup of tea. This is boring. [Music] Oh, I ain’t going to have grown a beard by the time you’ve put this roof up, Tim. At least that looks like a roof. We could have used a calendar rather than a stopwatch. [Music] [Applause] Mate, this could be um a new Olympic sport. Tim, even spuds fall asleep, mate. That’s how boring it is. [Applause] [Music] Oh, little bars to go up. Stop the clock. Stop the what? Oh, clock. What was that? Uh, how many hours? So, what was yours? Yours was 40 seconds. 43 42 seconds. I’m on 6 minutes 18. 6 minutes 18. Yeah. Nearly halfway through my I had I had time to go and get a seat out of the shed, go in the house, put the kettle on, make myself a cup of tea, run a biscuit, and get halfway through. Well done. You would have been drenched, mate. You would have been drenched if that was reality. That’s why I’m good at looking at the weather forecast. Right. So, there you go. If proof was needed, 1950s technology, uh, uh, convertible roofs better than 1990s technology. I mean, I know you keep on going on about the engineering is so amazing on these Lotuses, but who the heck designed the roof? Yeah, I think it was a Friday afternoon job. Yeah, it was definitely a Friday afternoon. Anyway, while the while the sun is shining and I’m just going to finish off me uh tea, I think we get the roofs down. Leave yours up, mate. I mean, it’ll be night time. Give me another 10 minutes. It’ll be night time before we go otherwise. Right, we’ll get the roof down. I think we’ll leave the Lotus here and we’ll go out for a spin, a a nice wafting tour around the Welsh um hills in the 190 SL. Right. So, here’s a tip for anybody, and I think everybody knows this, that’s got a classic car, that’s got a convertible roofers. Whenever you’re folding a convertible roof down, you got to make sure on the plastic window at the back that it doesn’t do that. Otherwise, it’s going to damage the actual plastic over time. So, you want to make sure that it’s nice and just gently folded over like that. And then put the roof down. There we go. So, you’ve uh you’ve had this car for a while now, haven’t you? Well, on and off. I mean, we’ve had it I know probably I think the process started probably about 4 years ago, but when it came in I mean first of all I should say the the owner of this car Peter you know Peter I know the um guy that had the Ferrari 308 done many many years back with us. So he always wanted a 190 SL and who can blame him. Really beautiful car. I mean, it it’s one of those cars that’s epitomizes the 1950s glamour era. I mean, you should be See Luren. I should be driving in Monaco. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. But, you know, Peter fell in love with the 190 SL. Always wanted one. And uh he found one. I say he found one. It technically it was a 190 SL, but oh my god, it was a basket case. I’ve never seen such a basket case in my life, but Peter was determined to bring it back to life. Was it a Friday night eBay job? Oh, probably. Yeah. It’s one of those classic cases where, you know, your computer or your phone should definitely have a breathalyzer on it before you press buy now. Uh and when it arrived at the workshop, it was it was evident to me that uh yeah, it would needed a full restoration. And when I say full restoration, I’m talking about a fullon restoration. to be the the rear suspension was held on with one massive huge throughbolt who somebody had drilled all the way through with um the chassis and the suspension, everything with a massive huge washer at either end. That was always all that was holding on the rear suspension. It was terrible. So, yeah, it went for a full-on restoration with a local company, HDROX, and you know, they put on pretty much most of the outer panels are new. Um I can’t remember what’s obviously the chassis is original, but um then he went off to get trimmed. So awesome trimmers to do the trimming. Beautiful job they’ve done as usual on the interior. Greg and Glenn, the wizards of trimming. And then finally it arrived back with us. So a good few years was lost getting it restored and trimmed and then we could do our bit. And full restorations do take a long time, don’t they? Yeah. A lot of time, uh, patience and money. Yeah. So, you know what one of my golden rules about whether or not you’re driving a classic car is, don’t you? What’s that gone? So whether or not the steering wheel is the same size or larger than the actual wheels than the wheels. Yeah. Now this has got a huge steering wheel on. I’m not sure if it had power steering. I don’t think it did have power steering. That’s why isn’t it? Cuz there was no power steering and you needed a big wheel to give you more. It’s like the wheel on my Austin Healey. It was huge. But without that big wheel, you’d never have turn the wheels. No. And uh awesome trimmers have done a beautiful job of trimming the steering wheel as well. It’s lovely. So, what’s going on with the gear stick then? What do you mean? Well, I’ve not seen you change gear yet. Ah, so it’s direct drive. So, you got a motor to a gearbox, direct drive, and the gear stick is for reverse, neutral, or forward. So, it’s effectively working as a switch like like one of the um direction switches you have. That’s it. But it’s obviously, you know, got a bit of a clunk to go. It It feels nice and mechanical when you’re putting it in to drive. Well, there’s always a big debate on this, right, as to whether or not you pull it backwards to go forwards or you push it forwards to go forwards. I personally am a pull it backwards to go forwards guy because in automatics you always pull the lever back like you know go three times to put it into D for drive. What do you I’d have the other way around. I’d have it forwards to go forwards and I’d have it back to go back. That to me is the easiest way to It splits people 50/50 on uh online. In fact, in the comments everybody put down what’s your pre preference. Would you have the gear stick you pull backwards to go forwards or would you push it forwards to go forwards in the comments? We’ll do a poll. Right, we’ve stopped by this idilic stream in the middle of nowhere in Wales. In case anybody’s wondering what road we’ve been on, it’s the uh back road from Raya to Kamustwith uh top end of Ellen Valley. Beautiful road. Um but time to talk about the EV sort of thing. So, what do we put in this 1958 Mercedes 190 SL? Originally, it had the 4 cylinder 1.9 L very asmatic engine. I think it was 100 horsepower. Anybody that knows their Mercedes 190 SLS knows they’re not sporty. So, what we put in it, if I pop the bonnet here, uh, where is it? Uh, so here we go. So, we put in a Zonic 190 motor in the front to a uh gear reduction unit which sits about midshipips there. Back to the original axle. There’s a funny old rear axle. I don’t if you ever saw that, Tim. Did you see the rear axle? Instead of being a solid axle like that, it’s kind of pivoted. There will be a name of it. You’ll have to research and put up uh on the screen. But the diff is here and this bit’s solid. And then there’s a like a a joint here and it kind of pivots like that. It’s a real weird axle. Never seen one before. So yeah, motor gear reduction unit, prop shaft to the original uh axle at the back. And it’s a 50 kWh battery pack. So we split that 50/50 between the front and the rear. So we got 50% of the battery pack in the front here. You can just about see the uh front of the Zonic 180 uh motor there. And this is the big inverter. This is the thing I don’t like about these motors is the inverter is just about the same size as the actual motor. No idea why. Um so there’s the uh motor down there. And although the bonnet is actually quite long, you can see there’s not that much space to put stuff because you got quite a big bulkhead uh like is around about there. And it’s only from there to there that you’ve got to play with. And right at the front in front of the battery is the radiators. Obviously, two radiators again, one for the battery pack and one for the motor and inverter. So, you got two header tanks, one this side and one that side. But that’s pretty much it in the front. Uh you got electric heater in here as well, which is really efficient. It’s beautiful when it’s not quite warm enough um in the UK sometimes, but you put the top down to have that lovely heat heating up the heat and heating up your feet and traveling through your knees. But that’s pretty much it in the front. We can’t put too much battery pack in this car cuz quite simply, it was never designed to take the weight. So, we had to put as much weight in as we were taking out, which is with that small little four-cylinder engine, although I think it was an iron block. It was quite heavy for the the size of the engine, but yeah, that’s why we can’t put much more than 50 kwatt hours of battery pack in this. All right, Tim, question for you. Have you been paying attention? Where is the charge socket? Have you seen it yet? I’ve not seen it. No, it’s certainly not on the side. It’s not obvious, is it? It’s going to be another James Bond special, I’m afraid. Tada. So, there’s no external filler cap on the 190 SL. So, we put it behind the number plate. And as you notice, it’s CCS rapid charging as most of our conversions are now. But the rest of the battery pack is in the boot. So, if I open up the boot, um, look. Oh, is it open? It’s open already. So, in the back here is the remaining 25 kW hours. So, 25 kW hours on the front, 25 in the back. And as you can see, it’s not quite finished yet. There’s a bit of trimming to do to box this all off and carpet it off. Uh charge cable in here as well. But yeah, you’ve got your charger in here, your low voltage junction box there, all your relays and fuses about um to do with our system there. Now, the charger is worth mentioning because it’s a 7 kW singlephase, 11 kW 3phase, but it’s also birectional. um because Peter, the owner of the car, wants to be able to use this uh uh car as home battery storage system in the winter. So, he’s going to be using this to power his house during the winter months with the 50 kWh battery pack and the vehicle to home technology that we’ve got in this car. So, this car is going to be powering his house. All right, just with a side profile here, I just want to show something because on our socials, we’ve had a number of people say, “Oh, it’s too low at the back.” But it’s an optical illusion because if you notice this wing like straight here is a lot higher the than the one at the back. So this one here cuts a lot lower down and the wing top if you like is a lot lower than the front one. So, if you actually look at the trim here, you’ll see it’s perfectly level on the car to the floor, but there it looks like it’s a lot lower down. So, that’s why a lot of people think, “Oh, it’s really, you know, got too much weight in the back with because of batteries, etc.” Nope. It’s exactly level on the road. But, I do love the side profile of this car. It’s a nice looking car from the side, isn’t it, Tim? It is. I really like the um what do you call them? Those sort of strips along the wheel there. I I’m calling them wing strakes. I don’t know if that’s the official name, but I’ve named them wing wing strakes. Comment below what they supposed to be called. But yeah, this is where there’s a lot of similarities between the 190 SL and the 300SL because they both have similar styling down the side. As I say, they were designed by the same guy at the end of the day. But yeah, I just think this side profile looks a little bit like the common gear, an early 1960s common gear convertible. It’s got a little bit similar styling, I think. I tell you what, Tim, there is no bad angle on this car, is there? It’s a pretty car. It I mean, we’ve been spend what, 15 minutes taking photographs on this bridge from various different angles, and every angle is a winner. Yeah, it’s been one of the easier cars to photograph, hasn’t it? The the the style I love the 1950s styling of it, you know, just whoever penned this, we’ll have to put his name up on the screen to credit him, but the the lines and the, you know, the curves and everything, it just work. Why can’t we design cars like this nowadays? What’s wrong with modern car design? I know there’s safety implications and stuff, but this if it was around today as a modern car with some of the safety features. People would just, you know, you’re right. I mean, it’s quite distinctive, isn’t it? What do you call them? The strakes on the side. I’m calling them strakes. I don’t know what they’re called. I don’t know what they’re called, but um you wouldn’t get anything like that nowadays, would you? No. It’s a shame that, you know, design has gone downhill, you know, in the modern times. I think every everything looks like a jelly mold now. Yeah. But but to be fair, I know it’s aerodynamics and safety and whatever, but this has been a very efficient car driving with uh you know, the electric drivetrain as far as the range is concerned. It’s only a 50 kWh battery pack, but we’re getting around about 180 mile range out of it, which is good for 50 kilowatt hour. Yeah, exactly. And I know some of it comes from the fact you’ve only been driving at around 50 mph, but that’s, you know, what you do in a car like this. It’s not It’s not a car that wants you to drive it fast, is it? You want to be nice and nice and relaxed around wafting along 50 mph, arm out the window. I mean, unfortunately, you know, it deserves, you know, a Carrie Grant and a Sophia Luren driving it, not a me and you driving it. We’re letting it down. We’re not doing it justice, are we? We’re not, unfortunately. But I tell you what, it’s been beautiful. We got loads of range left in the car, so we’re going to go off and find some ice cream. I mean, the the whole front of the car looks like it’s smiling as well, which I like as well. It looks like it’s really happy to be happy to be alive again because this car was definitely going to be crushed when it arrived. But now it’s happy. It’s got a smile on its face. It’s time to put a smile on Tim’s face and go and find some ice cream, I reckon. So, on that note, I think we’ll end the episode here. So, hope you enjoy this episode and we’ll see you on the next one. [Music]
After many years having a full restoration and conversion to electric it’s finally time to show off this stunning Mercedes Benz 190SL. Whilst it’s no sportscar it’s certainly now more than capable of cruising around the glorious country roads of Wales with it’s 180kW motor and 50kWh battery pack. The original 1.9L 4 cylinder engine wouldn’t have glided so effortlessly up the hills like it can now with it’s single speed electric drivetrain.
Not only will this lovely classic car now be used and enjoyed on the road but it’ll also serve a very practical purpose while parked up. Thanks to the V2L technology we’ve fitted to this car it’ll now also be used as battery storage for the customer and power his home when parked in the garage.
But the question is….. Why can’t we design cars this gorgeous anymore? is there a more beautiful electric car than this Mercedes Benz 190SL?
