Isn’t This a Museum?
Bringing life to 125 years of automotive history

At least once or twice a week, people walk through our front doors at the Classic Center here in Irvine and stop at the receptionist’s desk to ask how much the museum charges for admission.
When she says that admission is free, frequently the person will say in a puzzled manner, “But isn’t this a museum?”
Yes, the Classic Center is really a museum. Like all museums, we’re responsible for collecting, restoring, maintaining, displaying, and explaining artifacts that represent a specific field of knowledge. We even have a gift shop.
We perform all the functions of a museum with respect to the 125 years of automotive history created by the Mercedes-Benz company and its predecessors. In this anniversary year, we’re proud to display the slogan “125! Years – Inventor of the Automobile” that appears on the banner in front of the building and on our stationery, knowing that our role at the Classic Center is to keep that heritage alive.
We do that as a museum, of course. The Benz Velo and Victoria, used in photographs in this issue, are honest originals, acquired by Mercedes-Benz historians and restored and maintained by the technicians at our center and at the center in Stuttgart. The American Mercedes is not only original, but may be the only example in existence of the Mercedes automobiles produced in the United States. The Benz Patentwagen, the icon of the inception of the automobile, and the Daimler carriage first driven in the same year, are reproductions, of course, but they are exact in every respect to the original specifications.
Of course, the examples we have on display in California are a minute fraction of those in the overall Classic Center collection, many of which are on display in the main museum in Stuttgart. We believe it’s important as a company to maintain and display these tangible connections to the history in which we take so much pride.
Our history as the inventor of the automobile and the most significant innovator contributing to the evolution of the automobile is our hallmark. The historical displays here, at the U.S. manufacturing facility in Alabama, in England, and in Stuttgart are places where people can learn how the automobile evolved and our role in that progression.
But that’s where we go beyond being just a museum. If you want to buy an exact, operational reproduction of the Patentwagen, Mercedes-Benz can make it for you.
That’s a distinction of which we’re quite proud. Parts are still available for most of the models ever made by our company, especially those models that are considered to be historically significant. We don’t believe any other automobile company can make that claim.
That’s really the core of the reason why Daimler has the Classic Centers as an operational business unit. We’re the parts center that keeps our heritage alive on the highways of the world, providing service and enjoyment to millions of owners. Look past the reception desk and you’ll see our specialists on the telephones and Internet taking orders for parts for anything from a Patentwagen to a 540K from the mid-1930s or a 300D sedan of the 1980s. The only dividing line between us and the main global parts center is an arbitrary chronological boundary. We handle parts for cars older than 25 years; they handle parts for newer Mercedes-Benz cars.
But even beyond the parts centers for our classic cars, we surpass most other automobile companies. We’re one of the few companies in the world that has a business division that restores and maintains older models, and the only non-U.S. company in the world with a restoration center in North America.
Walk past the parts specialists and you’ll find yourself in a restoration workshop nearly twice the size of our display area and offices. There we can undertake the simple job of an oil change, do an engine rebuild for an owner, or a restoration from the wheels up, for any Mercedes-Benz, as faithful to the original specifications as any restorer could possibly be.
And we know more about those specifications, on a car-by-car basis, than anyone else. Upstairs we have more than one million separate build cards for Mercedes-Benz cars originally sold in the United States. One of our most popular services is providing information to owners on how their specific cars were originally built.
And with access to the network of owners who take advantage of all our services, we do an active business buying, selling, and brokering classic Mercedes-Benz automobiles. That also makes us the “go-to guys” when the company needs to find a specific model, often in a specific color, for a display, or a show, or a commercial. One of the projects I’ve been working on this week is  locating a group of specific cars for a commercial that you’ll be seeing very soon. Stay tuned for that.
Putting that banner on our building with the slogan of our 125-year anniversary isn’t taken lightly. It means that we not only can make the statement that the automobile age started with us, but also that our company continues to invent the automobile every day.
And if you’d like to see, learn about, and perhaps even touch some of the historical artifacts that are the foundation of that corporate philosophy, come by yourself, or with your MBCA section, to the Classic Center in Irvine. We may be a real museum, but we never charge admission.