More than Just a Car

Owned from new, then sold to fund a family business, this 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet was reacquired years later.

Article John Edelman with Gary Anderson

Images Denis L. Tanney

Certainly, there are many families that can tell stories about an automobile that played an important role in their lives, but I’ll match our family’s story – and the role a  certain 280SE Cabriolet played in our family business – with anyone. The car in question was a reward for my father’s first entrepreneurial success, the key to the family’s second business success, and is now a part of our family once again as we build our third enterprise.

A life-long love for cars

But the story actually starts before this car was built. Cars had always been an important part of my father’s life; he passed that love of cars on to me. In fact, my first memories are of weekends shopping with him for cars. It wasn’t that he was always in the market for a car; he just loved looking at them and learning about them.

In fact, we owned a solid Citroën; with its front-wheel drive, my father had decided that this French machine would be a perfect vehicle for the Connecticut winters that challenged drivers around our suburban home. To understand that automobile was to understand my father, with his combination of individuality, rationality and always, his great, overarching sense of style.

Like father, like son

As I grew up, he traded the Citroën for a succession of all-wheel-drive Audis, but we continued to go car-shopping for entertainment. He didn’t bat an eye when, at age 12, I came home to ask him to go with me to pick up the car I had just bought. With $25 I had saved, I had purchased a 1967 BMW 1800 that a neighbor didn’t want.

Not only was that BMW my first car, it also taught me my first business lessons. After doing some routine maintenance and detailing it, I sold it for $600. I learned there was money to be made by buying something dirty and selling it clean, as long as it was a brand recognized for its quality.

By the age of 16, I had bought and sold seven cars of all kinds. In fact, during my senior year in high school, I sold a car to my English teacher; the profits financed a trip to England where I spent time absorbing the similarities and differences between American and English styles in fashion and design.

I suppose, in a way, I was simply emulating my father. By 1971, he had built his leather business by developing  ways to stamp the hides with patterns that made them look like exotic reptile skins, and marketing the product in innovative ways – he even hired a young Andy Warhol to do his advertising – to the point that he was able to sell the company to DuPont.

The 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet

With cash in his pocket for the first time – previously, profits had gone back into building the business – my father drove over to the local Mercedes-Benz dealer and spent $14,000 for a new black 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet that we had admired a few weeks earlier. As we had learned, this triple-black car (black paint, black-leather interior, black cloth top) with a 4-speed automatic transmission with console selector was one of only three like it in the United States.

Of course, he registered the car under the business – his accountant said he was crazy – but he and my mother, who was equally involved in the business, drove it as their company car for the next decade.

Financing the family’s future

Unfortunately, their next business venture producing shoes wasn’t so successful – though my brother has become a successful shoe designer – and by 1981, my parents knew they needed to find another business line. That was when my father’s faith in style and brand paid off; they were able to sell that 3.5 cabrio to the same dealer from whom they had purchased the car 10 years before. Their profit: $26,000. How many cars from that period can you name that actually gained value as they got older?

With that money, they took an extended trip to Asia to find new sources of materials that they thought might sell in the expanding interior-decorating market. In Thailand they found a producer of high-quality water buffalo hides and sunk every penny they had remaining into their first order.

Beginning with that first order, the family’s new business became a popular supplier for high-quality leather coverings. Branded this time with the family name, their product was in demand by custom designers who used the leather in everything from luxury homes to offices, yachts and planes; business volume increased by five times in five years. This time they sold the business to Knoll Furniture. We used the money to buy our current business, Design Within Reach, a turn-around candidate that I believed could be brought back by the same business practices I had learned from my parents. 

A cool Mercedes on eBay

At the time my parent’s contract with Knoll Furniture ended in 2007, we planned a family party at our house for all the employees we had worked with for more than 25 years. It was then that our good fortune with cars manifested itself again. The party was scheduled for a Thursday evening; on Monday that same week, an old friend and like-minded car aficionado sent me an email. “I know you’re always looking for a cool Mercedes and I’ve found one on eBay I think you’ll like,” he wrote.

Sure enough, when I clicked on the link, I knew exactly what he meant. For sale in Columbus, Ohio, was a 1971 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet in triple black; included with the seller’s description of the 280SE were these startling sentences, “I bought this car in 1981. It had previously been owned by a hide dealer in Connecticut.” The serial numbers matched; it was the identical cabriolet my parents had reluctantly sold decades earlier to finance the family’s next new business venture.

I quickly called a friend in Columbus; he took a drive to look at the car. With my friend there as my agent, we negotiated a deal; he bought the car for me. The owner was pleased to learn what brand and style can mean as he banked a check for considerably more than the $40,000 he had paid my father for the car. The next telephone call was to a classic-car shipper who understood the situation.

Tears of joy

On the evening of our employee-farewell party – with nearly 100 people in the house – I heard the brief honk from a truck’s air horn. Ushering everyone outside to the front yard – and ensuring my father was at the head of the curious crowd – we watched as our family’s Mercedes-Benz was driven up the driveway, completing the journey that began almost a quarter-century before. I could see tears in my parents’ eyes, though I’m certain there wasn’t a dry eye in – or outside – the house.

Of course, when we had time to inspect the car, we saw that it hadn’t received the best of maintenance during the years since being sold to finance our start-up, but it was largely intact and a great candidate for restoration.

Restoring the Cabriolet

After a nostalgic drive, my father and I delivered it to Auto Turismo Sport Ltd. in New Milford, Connecticut; that facility would oversee the cabriolet’s restoration during the next three years. The Classic Center in Irvine was a big help in locating parts, as were local section members of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America. Our goal was to restore the car to its condition when my father and I first saw it in 1971.

During the restoration, it became a regular habit for me to pick up my father at least once a month and take him to the shop where he would point out little things that he remembered, like the position of a knob or the correct orientation of a piece of trim.

Our leather in our car

Except for one thing. We couldn’t just install standard replacement leather in our family’s lifeline car. Instead, we had some of our former employees cut, perforate and channel the best Edelman hides to the exact original Mercedes-Benz specifications.

Today, the interior of this opulent machine is a grand place to spend time. I can sit in it for long periods of time just soaking up the memories.

We enjoy every minute we spend in the car. My father and I go for rides on a frequent basis, talking about the cars we see on the street and the ones we remember from our past. My daughter, who is just at driving age, and my son, who is four years younger, enjoy it nearly as much as we do – if that’s even possible.

We have shown the car at the local Greenwich Concours d’Elegance; the many people who admired the car during the day rewarded us with familiar enjoyment mirrored in their faces and their stories of similar cars that have played important roles in their lives.

This is a society built around cars, so it’s not surprising that they play an important role in the lives of every family. But my father and I can’t imagine that any car could possibly be as significant as this 280SE cabriolet has been and continues to be to our family.

Production of the W111 280SE 3.5 ran from August 1969 to July 1971. In 24 months, total production was 3,270 coupes and 1,232 cabriolets.

This refined model’s compelling combination of style, performance and rarity ensures it a place high on the list of today’s most collectible Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

State of grace: The 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet is a study in subtle proportions and understated elegance, embellished by beautiful, simple detailing.

In 1969, the newly developed 230-horsepower M116 3.5-liter V-8 engine was offered in the 280SE, providing increased performance over the standard 6-cylinder engine.

During the car’s restoration, the family made special arrangements for the best Edelman hides to be cut, perforated and channeled to exact Mercedes-Benz specifications, and used on all leather surfaces.

The lustrous wood trim adds warmth and depth to the cabriolet’s beautiful hand-assembled interior.

Family portrait: John Edelman together with his father and the triple-black Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet they both cherish.

These rare automobiles were mostly hand built – the last Mercedes-Benz automobiles not assembled on production lines – and cost three times as much as a comparable Cadillac.

Specifications

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet (W111)

TYPE: Two-door four-passenger cabriolet

ENGINE: M116 3,499cc, electronic fuel injection, overhead cam V-8

TRANSMISSION: 4-speed automatic with center console selector

HORSEPOWER: 230 at 6,050 rpm (SAE)   TORQUE: 231 lb-ft at 4,200 rpm

LENGTH: 192.9 in   CURB WEIGHT: 3,630 lb   FUEL EFFICIENCY: 15-17 mpg

PERFORMANCE: ZERO-60: 10 sec   TOP SPEED: 130 mph