Finally, someone has brought up the World's Greatest Car! When I was 18, twice (!) my father let me drive his Fiat 124 Sport Coupe from San Francisco to Salt Lake and back. That, and the 124 Spider were the best cars Fiat ever made. Five main bearings on the crank shaft and dual overhead cams, that car would do 110 mph all day long (Oh, the days of no speed limits in Nevada!). On one trip I made the 810 miles in 9.5 hours, and that was with TWO gas stops. Go figure my average speed (BTW, gas mileage would drop from 30 to about 18 at those speeds). Foolishness of Youth. Anyway, the only car that passed me and STAYED past me on either trip was a 1956 or 57 silver 300SL Gullwing. I went by it at about 90 mph, he downshifted and when he shot passed it felt as if he was going about 60 mph faster (which he probably was). Later, I ran into him at a gas station on North Temple, and I got all the details: Inline 8 cylinder, oil cooled engine. . . I managed not to drool on it. Ever since, that's been the car of my dreams. The closest I'll ever come is the cast-metal Italian 12:1 model, which I nonetheless cherish. (I don't think it was Jack Gallivan-- the guy said he was a doctor) John R Peterson

Message: 7 Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 21:36:16 -0600 From: "Chuck Hards" <chuck.hards@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: SPOC To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Message-ID: <2541d8030709082036i5bcebc6cy45fad15040737ec4@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Funny you should mention the gullwing.

When I was a teen, I often would see Tribune editor (back then) Jack Gallivan driving his silver gullwing Mercedes back and forth to work, near our house next to the U of U.

See? This thread is legitimate because some sports cars have "astronomical" price tags! LOL.

On 9/8/07, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:

...

BTW, this thread could turn out to be an expensive one for me. I miss my SL and now this thread has got me putting out feelers for my second most favorite SL, a "Pagoda top" 230 (most favorite is a 300 Gullwing but considering they're going for so much these days that a friend was recently able to trade his for a large house up Emmigration Canyon, and, well, sigh, it's just not realistic).