Behind The Star – Gary Anderson
There will always be an England
What has England to do with an American club magazine about German cars? As I learned during a visit there in January, that country has played and continues to play an important connecting role between the German marque we appreciate and Mercedes-Benz activities here.
The main reason for my visit was to celebrate the 80th birthday of Graham Robson, my old friend and a regular contributor to The Star. During his long and distinguished career as an automotive author and journalist, built on the foundation of an Oxford degree, apprenticeship at Jaguar and management of Triumph motorsports teams, Graham Robson has written more than 170 automobile history books and countless magazine articles. His article about Eugen Böhringer appears in this issue. Robson is currently updating his history of the Cosworth company, designer of the 16-valve heads for the 190E 2.3 cars, and researching the Ilmor Engine Factory, now Mercedes-Benz F1 engine development facility in England.
Star contributor Graham Robson doing one of his favorite things; driving a vintage car.
Earlier in the week we had driven to the Brooklands Museum to meet Chris Bass, editor of The Gazette, the magazine of the Mercedes-Benz Club, established in England in 1953 as the first club for the marque recognized by Daimler outside Germany. History is literally underfoot at Brooklands. Parking near Mercedes-Benz World, site of the company’s driving academy in England, I puzzled about the strange slant of the parking area until I realized we were standing on the remains of the banked Brooklands track where the Blitzen Benz once raced.
The archives and offices of the Mercedes-Benz Club are located in the restored building and control tower of the Brooklands Flying Club. Bass and the club archivists had assembled a set of materials for our visit, which included the ledger book with the hand-written minutes of the 1956 meeting at which their club board approved the formation of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America, comprised of 71 North American members of the England-based club. They also had a copy of the first roster of the MBCA, listing each of the American members with their addresses and the cars they owned. They even had the original application for membership of well-known racecar driver Briggs Cunningham. We’ll have a detailed article about the history of the MBCA in The Star later this year as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding.
Robson and I also had the rare opportunity to visit the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 headquarters in Brackley. Despite the challenge of putting the 2016 car on the track for testing only three weeks after our visit, their public relations managers gave us a tour of the whole facility, including a brief glimpse of the first chassis being assembled in the race bays. The only cautions: Stay out of the way and don’t take any photographs. We’ll have an article on the behind-the-scenes activities at this world-champion constructor’s facilities in an upcoming issue.
Truly, there is a unique English connection between our distinguished German marque and our American club.