Indianapolis 500 Section
STAR Quarterly
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Q 2 | A P R — J U N , 2 0 2 1
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the event central will be housed BENZ - President’s Message: and it is beautiful! I'm absolutely sure if you are able to attend you Another quarter has flown great opportunity to meet will have a thoroughly enjoyable
Benz Owners Benz time. We were fortunate to have
- by -- sort of. Anyway, as April other members. Our second fast approaches I'm back at event is May 8th and will be great weather on both our drive
the keyboard writing about all starting with lunch at Squeal- to and from and while on the is- MERCEDES
that has happened since our er's BBQ in Mooresville fol- land. We got to see a lot and CLUB OF AMERICA, learn even more with the help of Mercedes last newsletter. The planning lowed by a visit to a personal committee has been busy car collection of 70 cars in two other members who fre-
INDIANAPOLIS 500 SECTION choosing this year's events Camby. It will be another fun quently visit Hilton Head. Romeo
The Newsletter of Central Indiana Central of Newsletter The and Marie Zamberletti (our fea- and putting them on the calen- event. More information tured members of the month) dar. I'm pleased to report about these two events and spent a great deal of time with us we've made some really good more on the calendar can be showing us around and teaching plans. We've publicized our found inside this newsletter. us a lot about the area. I strongly first two events and have had Part of the reason Sara and recommend everyone consider a great response already to INSIDE THIS my quarter went by a little joining Sara and me (and the our New Member Breakfast/ ISSUE: faster was we took a "had to Zamberletti's) for MBCA's national April Fool's Lunch (combining get away" trip in February to Freude Event. 2021 Events! 2-3 NMB and Valentine's Lunch). Hilton Head Island in South I'm still waiting for our first Carolina. It was our first visit Hoping you'll find some inter- Member 4 new member from 2020 to to Hilton Head and we were esting events on our new calendar Spotlight register. It's a free breakfast able to preview the location and we'll see you at several of Mercedes- 5 or lunch at LePeep's on April of our huge MBCA national them. Freude 10th for our first year mem- event in November. We got Ken Sponsors 6 bers. Please don't miss this to visit the Omni Hotel where
M-B Engineering 7-8 History
Omni Hotel reception Omni Hotel beach P A G E 2 Stuff (& more stuff) to do!!!
INDY 500 SECTION'S 2021 UPCOMING EVENT CALENDAR
April 10 11am New Member Breakfast/April Fool's Lunch LePeep Restaurant 4400 Weston Point Dr Zionsville (NW Indy on Michigan Rd). All new members since last NMB and their associate have free breakfast/lunch on the club. Come and meet other members and enjoy a great meal. Please RSVP to Ken at: [email protected]
April 24 9am Pete's Drive-In Car Show Join other local car clubs at Pete's Classic Storage & Restoration for a private car show. Please see more information included here in this newsletter.
May 8 11:30am Lunch & Private Car Collection viewing Meet at Squealers BBQ, 390 E High St, Mooresville, IN, for lunch. Then after lunch we will As with all events, leave about 1pm to see a fantastic private car collection on a three acre ranch in Camby. For those who like to carpool, watch for my white convertible with the section banner on the west side of SR- please RSVP to 67 before 11am. I'll try to be obvious. As with all events, please RSVP to me at: [email protected] Ken at [email protected] June 19 8:45am Crawfordsville City Tour Meet behind the McDonald's in Lebanon off the I-65 exit for SR-32 for those coming from the north side to carpool across SR-32 to our meeting point in Crawfordsville. We plan to leave at 9am sharp! For those coming from the south side, you may elect to head west on I-74 to the sec- ond Crawfordsville exit to our starting point which will be announced at a later date. Member Kev- in Howey says there are many interesting sites to see in his home town and is arranging a tour of the highlights with a nice lunch to follow.
July 10 TBD Studebaker Museum We'll be meeting on US-31 on the north side to carpool to the fantastic Concours D'Elegance at the mansion on the site of the Studebaker Museum. For those that made it two years ago there were elegant automobiles and admission included tickets to the Museum.
July 24 TBD Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Air Museum Tentatively planning a return trip to the incredible WPAFB Air Museum. An- other repeat trip from a few years ago. Absolutely great trip with a lot to see and a lot of walking. We’ll find a good restaurant for lunch before heading home. Watch for more information on this trip in our next newsletter.
Aug 15 1:00pm Annual Show And Shine picnic. This year will be held a little closer in at the Dillon Park, Noblesville. The park is located on the north side of E 146th St and Cherry Tree Rd. Another beautiful park in the Hamilton Co. Parks.
INDIANAPOLIS 500 SEC T I O N But wait… there’s more!!! P A G E 3
Aug 28 All day Artmobilia Located in downtown Carmel. Full details to come, but if we have 15 cars interested, we can park in our own section. The cost for this privilege is $50/vehicle. If members would like to go on their own, it appears pre-registration cost is $35/vehicle. Full details can be viewed online at Artmobilia's website. www.artmobilia.org Sept 18 (?) Autocross and Defensive Driving Class Three section combined Autocross and Defensive Driving Class. Cincinnati, Bluegrass and Indy 500 sections will be hosting this event at Northern KY University across the river from Cincinnati. Full details still being worked on. Nov 2-5 MBCA's national Freude event This year it is held on Hilton Head Island combining StarTech and StarFest into one fabulous gathering. See advertise- ment inside this newsletter. Dec 5 1:00pm Annual Christmas Party at George's Neighborhood Grill, 71st & Binford Blvd.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT "PETE'S DRIVE-IN" CAR SHOW Eric Grabovsky, GM of Pete's Classic Storage & Restoration, will be spon- soring "Pete's Drive -In", a private car show April 24th, 9am - 1pm. Coffee and donuts will be served in the morning and a food truck will be there for lunch. Grab bags will be available to the first 50 entries. There will be a $20/vehicle entry fee payable at the door. The address is 2525 E 56th St, Indianapolis. Pre-registration required. Email me at [email protected] or call me at 317-669-2072 by 4/18 to enter.
TWO MORE EVENTS STILL IN PLANNING:
--- Revisit the IMS Museum with lunch to follow. We'd like to "replay" the highly successful visit from 2020 to the IMS Muse- um with lunch, go-carting and closing with a visit to a local store associated with race memorabilia. Possibly in November.
---Drive to an historic mansion in Aurora, IN, on the Ohio River (Hillforest https://hillforest.org/) . Tour the mansion with a lunch at the end of the tour. Then drive home on one of the various routes planned -- easy (Interstate), moderate (IN Route 1 to I-74) or a bit longer drive (very scenic) along the OH River, through Madison, IN and home. It should be a fun day with a scenic drive included. We're considering Sept or Oct for this event.
NEARBY CINCINNATI SECTION EVENTS (Cincy info at www.mbcacincy.org/events) April 17 Spring Classic Driving Tour Registration: $25 May 1 Pine Mountain Hillclimb June 13 Cincy Concours D'Elegance, Ault Park, Cincinnati Sept 18 Autocross & Defensive Driving Class (in conjunction with Indy 500 and Bluegrass sections)
P A G E 4 Membership Facts:
THREE NEW MEMBERS: NINETEEN RENEWED MEMBERS: J. & Elizabeth Marshall Patrick Adams Celeste Berry Joseph & Anna Mueller Dan Robinson Arch Hawkins & Becky McClure Ronald Kline Eric Grabovsky Alan & Vicki Halberstadt Richard Huntzinger
R. Kent & Linda Bolerjack Leonard & Marilyn Sturgeon Sam Mishelow Terry & Shirley Fulk Daniel Wheeler Rev. Kevin & Pam Howey Robert Freeman Mike Goettsche Hannelore Brabo Patrick Duffy Roye & Jean Gaha Steve DeBruyn
“To catch the reader's attention, place an interesting sentence or quote from the story They are currently driving a platinum MEMBERhere.” SPOTLIGHT 2012 S550.
to hire Romeo, who eventually be- In their retirement, the Zamberlettis love THE ZAMBERLETTIS came their C.F.O. to travel, especially on cruises, and they have spent time on Hilton Head Island for Romeo Zamberletti is a lifelong resi- While at the V.A., Romeo spotted a many years. We were fortunate they dent of Danville, Illinois, although young music therapist working there were there in February when we visited going to school there had its challeng- named Marie, who had been raised the island for the first time. They were es. He had to grow a thick skin in in Pennsylvania. The two have been fun tour guides, and we are looking for- grade school since he was the tallest married for over 30 years and they ward to seeing them again in November in his class and his name was Romeo! are avid car enthusiasts. Their first for the MBCA Freude Event. After serving in the Air Force, the Mercedes was a 1985 silver SD with
V.A. hospital in Danville was fortunate a beautiful wine-colored interior.
INDIANAPOLIS 500 SEC T I O N P A G E 5
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www.mercedesofindy.com Fax: 317 580-6822 SUPPORT OUR SUPPORT The Rolling Lab Mercedes Used to Today, measurement sensors would be placed inside Test Some of Its Greatest Cars the test vehicle and WiFi-blasted to a mobile laptop. But back in the analog days of the Fifties, this wasn't The Mercedes-Benz "measurement car" let engineers possible. The necessary equipment was often too large monitor a prototype on the fly—connected by a or heavy to fit in the vehicle in question without Schrö- hard-wire umbilical cord. dinger-ing the whole operation and impacting what By BRETT BERK: MAR 12, 2021 was intended to be measured. Anyway, everything was hard-wired. So the three-pointed star brand came up with another solution.
The 300d sedan was Mercedes’ flagship back then. Known as a "Representative Class" vehicle, it was meant to compete with the Rolls-Royces and Bentleys of the time. As such, it was the precursor to the deli- ciously over-engineered Mercedes-Benz 600, and, like that Grosser, was purchased mainly by celebrities, What do you do if you’re a top-tier German automobile heads of state, and captains of industry. company during the Economic Miracle of your country’s post-World-War-II boom, you’re hell-bent on producing the best-engineered vehicles in the world, and you want to figure out a cool way to conduct dynamic testing on your future products? Well, if you’re Mercedes-Benz, you take one of your range-topping limousines, convert it into a rolling chase-car lab, and buy a bunch of wire.
Hungry to regain the dominant position in the global au- tomotive industry that they’d squandered while using conscripted concentration-camp labor to build arma- ments for the Nazis, Mercedes-Benz spent the mid-20th century creating some of its most innovative vehicles, like the 300 SL. The company built buses and trucks to get Germany moving again. And its engineers conducted their first forays into crash safety, on vehicles like the proto-S- In this special iteration, the front end of the car was Class W110 Fintail (Heckflosse) sedan. So M-B under- left pretty much stock, with the fuel-injected straight- standably wanted to test things out on the track to see six that also powered the Gullwing in the engine bay how they were performing, and how this performance and the front seats remaining in place. But the rear could be improved. passenger compartment and ample trunk were treated to a shooting-brake-esque conversion, resulting in the loss of the rear doors and the enclosure of the boot. (Side Note: Benz conversion specialists Binz did create a few custom station wagon conversions of a 300 back in the day.)
and go bleep-bloop a lot, as well as a pair of bolted- down back-to-back stools where engineers could sit and pore over the data. A special pass-through, like an inverse Periscopio, was fitted to the roof just aft of thewindshield header, allowing the requisite cables to be led out of the measurement car and into the vehicle being tested, a design Benz referred to as a “data um- bilical cord.” The 300d then chased the development car around the track at speeds of up to 120 km/h (around 75 mph), recording relevant information in up to 14 categories.
Mercedes still owns this vehicle; it’s housed in the au- tomaker's museum in Stuttgart, where it is occasionally put on display. Why did the company save it? "It is a one-off timepiece, and part of the histo- ry of the Untertürkheim test track, known as Ein- fahrbahn," says Ralph Wagenknecht of the Mercedes- Benz Classic Department. Unfortunately the historians have no stories recorded about what it must have been like to ride in this thing, but they did suggest this visual: "Imagine being back-to-back in the 'trunk' of a high-speed car through a banked curve…" This capacious rear compartment was covered in rounded transparent Plexiglas panels, like a parade NOTE: This article and other tidbits and links can be hearse. It was then filled with the kind of measure- found at https://www.roadandtrack.com/car- ment equipment that looks like it would flash its lights culture/a35712290/the-rolling-lab-mercedes-used-to- test-some-of-its-greatest-cars/
MERCEDES-BENZ Place Club of AMERICA Stamp Indianapolis 500 Section Star Here 6168 Ruthven Dr Noblesville, IN 46062