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relatively steady but a tad too high - couldn't get below 130 for the last 3 days. hmm. I decided to check my 'bolus wizard' and the correction factor was changed somehow - maybe when I replaced my battery?!
Based on the West of the Preseli hill,Pembrokeshire,south facing with Rosebush village just out of sight on the upper right corner.
1956 MERCEDES-BENZ 300SL GULLWING COUPE
Sold $3,410,000.00
*Beautiful car and nicer than the Bonhams car we saw yesterday, but I do miss the patina of the Bonhams car.*
In 1956, the Mercedes-Benz factory in Stuttgart produced 311 hand-built 300SL Gullwings. This 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is a European market car, originally delivered through the Mercedes-Benz distributor Mario Morescalchi in Rome, Italy. Based on the initial Mercedes-Benz 300SL racing cars of 1952 that utterly dominated European sports-car competition, including 1-2 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, plus another 1-2 victory in Mexico's deadly Carrera Panamericana, the road-going 300SL "Gullwing" of 1954-57 was never meant to be. That is, until famed New York automobile importer Max Hoffman successfully lobbied the Daimler-Benz board of directors to authorize limited production. Introduced at the February 1954 New York International Motor Sports Show alongside the touring-oriented 190SL, the glamorous 300SL was mostly hand-built and immediately recognized as an object of automotive desire for the world's business, entertainment and social luminaries. Today, the unforgettable 300SL ranks among the most collectible and valuable of all postwar sports cars. Development and engineering of the roadgoing 300SL fills many excellent and authoritative volumes. The 300SL's features, engineering and immense performance remain advanced and relevant. Featuring an ultra-lightweight spaceframe chassis, the 300SL's highlights seem modern even today, including direct fuel injection, a 3.0-liter SOHC inline 6-cylinder powerplant, dry-sump engine lubrication, fully independent suspension and, of course, upward-opening "Gullwing" doors. Most of these brilliant and potent performers carry fascinating provenance and this stellar example from 1956 is certainly no exception. Order #823298 left the factory on October 30, 1956. It was finished in DB180 Silver Metallic Gray over a Blue 333 leather interior, and featured a Becker-Mexico radio, Hirchmann antenna and an outside mirror. It ended up in Pennsylvania by at least 1993 and was in the collection of Roger S. Gallet by 1995. Gallet owned many classic cars, including a 1962 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster that he bought in 1981. The current owner acquired this Gullwing from Gallet's estate in 2020 and brought it back to 300SL restorer Coachwerks in Victoria, BC, Canada. Overall, the Gullwing was in very good condition but had obviously been unused for several years. Over the past 3 years Coachwerks completely disassembled and stripped down the body, chassis, engine and all mechanical components to perform a nut-and-bolt, frame-off, concours-quality restoration. Every mechanical component has been restored or replaced. This Gullwing is in better-than-new condition and there is an extensive file documenting the restoration. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Centre in Long Beach, CA, has verified this 300SL retains its matching-numbers body, engine, transmission, rear axle, a front spindle and the steering box. It is presented in the correct DB 180 Silver Gray Metallic and trimmed with a natural leather interior and two sets of seats; green cloth inserts and full leather. It rides on Rudge wheels, comes with fitted luggage and is documented by over 3,000 restoration photos and all invoices.
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Today we're back at Barrett-Jackson for our third and last visit there this week to catch some of today's auction.
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It's Scottsdale Car Week! I flew here and Fred drove with Harriet for some warmer weather, friend visits, and cars!
The Eiffel Tower (Tour Eiffel), designed by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 World's Fair
330 metres (1,083 ft) tall, on a base 125 metres (410 ft) square
Design
18,038 metallic parts
5,300 workshop designs
50 engineers and designers
Construction
150 workers in the Levallois-Perret factory
Between 150 and 300 workers on the construction site
2,500,000 rivets
7,300 tonnes of iron
60 tonnes of paint
5 elevators
Duration
2 years, 2 months and 5 days of construction*
The construction schedule
Works kick-off - 26th January 1887
Start of the pillars' mounting - 1st July 1887
First floor achievement - 1st April 1888
Second floor achievement - 14th August 1888
Top and assembly achievement - 31st March 1889*
The plan to build a tower 300 metres high was conceived as part of preparations for the World's Fair of 1889.
The wager was to "study the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars with a square base, 125 metres across and 300 metres tall". Selected from among 107 projects, it was that of Gustave Eiffel, an entrepreneur, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, both engineers, and Stephen Sauvestre, an architect, that was accepted.
Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, the two chief engineers in Eiffel's company, had the idea for a very tall tower in June 1884. It was to be designed like a large pylon with four columns of lattice work girders, separated at the base and coming together at the top, and joined to each other by more metal girders at regular intervals.
The tower project was a bold extension of this principle up to a height of 300 metres - equivalent to the symbolic figure of 1000 feet. On September 18 1884 Eiffel registered a patent "for a new configuration allowing the construction of metal supports and pylons capable of exceeding a height of 300 metres".
In order to make the project more acceptable to public opinion, Nouguier and Koechlin commissioned the architect Stephen Sauvestre to work on the project's appearance.
Sauvestre proposed stonework pedestals to dress the legs, monumental arches to link the columns and the first level, large glass-walled halls on each level, a bulb-shaped design for the top and various other ornamental features to decorate the whole of the structure. In the end the project was simplified, but certain elements such as the large arches at the base were retained, which in part give it its very characteristic appearance.
The curvature of the uprights is mathematically determined to offer the most efficient wind resistance possible. As Eiffel himself explains: "All the cutting force of the wind passes into the interior of the leading edge uprights. Lines drawn tangential to each upright with the point of each tangent at the same height, will always intersect at a second point, which is exactly the point through which passes the flow resultant from the action of the wind on that part of the tower support situated above the two points in question. Before coming together at the high pinnacle, the uprights appear to burst out of the ground, and in a way to be shaped by the action of the wind".
The assembly of the supports began on July 1, 1887 and was completed twenty-two months later.
All the elements were prepared in Eiffel’s factory located at Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris. Each of the 18,000 pieces used to construct the Tower were specifically designed and calculated, traced out to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre and then put together forming new pieces around five metres each. A team of constructors, who had worked on the great metal viaduct projects, were responsible for the 150 to 300 workers on site assembling this gigantic erector set.
All the metal pieces of the tower are held together by rivets, a well-refined method of construction at the time the Tower was constructed. First the pieces were assembled in the factory using bolts, later to be replaced one by one with thermally assembled rivets, which contracted during cooling thus ensuring a very tight fit. A team of four men was needed for each rivet assembled: one to heat it up, another to hold it in place, a third to shape the head and a fourth to beat it with a sledgehammer. Only a third of the 2,500,000 rivets used in the construction of the Tower were inserted directly on site.
The uprights rest on concrete foundations installed a few metres below ground-level on top of a layer of compacted gravel. Each corner edge rests on its own supporting block, applying to it a pressure of 3 to 4 kilograms per square centimetre, and each block is joined to the others by walls.
On the Seine side of the construction, the builders used watertight metal caissons and injected compressed air, so that they were able to work below the level of the water.
The tower was assembled using wooden scaffolding and small steam cranes mounted onto the tower itself.
The assembly of the first level was achieved by the use of twelve temporary wooden scaffolds, 30 metres high, and four larger scaffolds of 40 metres each.
"Sand boxes" and hydraulic jacks - replaced after use by permanent wedges - allowed the metal girders to be positioned to an accuracy of one millimetre.
On December 7, 1887, the joining of the major girders up to the first level was completed. The pieces were hauled up by steam cranes, which themselves climbed up the Tower as they went along using the runners to be used for the Tower's lifts.
It only took five months to build the foundations and twenty-one to finish assembling the metal pieces of the Tower.
Considering the rudimentary means available at that period, this could be considered record speed. The assembly of the Tower was a marvel of precision, as all chroniclers of the period agree. The construction work began in January 1887 and was finished on March 31, 1889. On the narrow platform at the top, Eiffel received his decoration from the Legion of Honour.
Even before the end of its construction, the Tower was already at the heart of much debate. Enveloped in criticism from the biggest names in the world of Art and Literature, the Tower managed to stand its ground and achieve the success it deserved.
Various pamphlets and articles were published throughout the year of 1886, le 14 février 1887, la protestation des Artistes.
The "Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel", published in the newspaper Le Temps, is addressed to the World's Fair's director of works, Monsieur Alphand. It is signed by several big names from the world of literature and the arts : Charles Gounod, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas junior, François Coppée, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, William Bouguereau, Ernest Meissonier, Victorien Sardou, Charles Garnier and others to whom posterity has been less kind.
Other satirists pushed the violent diatribe even further, hurling insults like : "this truly tragic street lamp" (Léon Bloy), "this belfry skeleton" (Paul Verlaine), "this mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed" (François Coppée), "this high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney" (Maupassant), "a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository" (Joris-Karl Huysmans).
Once the Tower was finished the criticism burnt itself out in the presence of the completed masterpiece, and in the light of the enormous popular success with which it was greeted. It received two million visitors during the World's Fair of 1889.
[*www.TourEiffel.Paris]