Mercedes Benz

Mercedes-Benz scores outstanding success in the poll for the ‘Goldenes Klassik-Lenkrad’: this year, four of the brand’s vehicles are awarded a trophy. The competition is run by specialist magazine Auto Bild Klassik in the form of a readers’ poll. The gala award ceremony for the winners took place in the Mercedes-Benz Museum on 29 September 2011.


“I’m absolutely delighted about the success for Mercedes-Benz,” says Michael Bock, Head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Managing Director of Mercedes-Benz Museum GmbH. “It is a perfect way to round off the anniversary year marking 125 years of the automobile.”

The ‘Classic of the Year’ is awarded in five categories – and in three of them, the title goes to Stuttgart. In the saloon category, the Mercedes-Benz 300 (model series W 186) from 1951, popularly known as the ‘Adenauer’, tops the poll with 7,164 votes. The ‘convertibles and roadsters’ category is won by the Mercedes-Benz model series R 107 – the SL of the 1970s and 1980s (8,374 votes). Dominating the ‘off-road vehicles and MPVs’ category with 9,934 votes is the Unimog, first manufactured in 1951. The models that were nominated for the ‘Classic of the Year’ all celebrate a milestone anniversary in 2011.

The Mercedes-Benz CLS saw the greatest success: it not only won the ‘Classic of the Future’ title in the saloon category, but, with 12,350 votes, also received more support from the readers than any other model in the poll.

The main prize for the ‘Goldenes Klassik Lenkrad’ is donated by Daimler AG – a Mercedes-Benz 190 E (model series W 201) built in 1989. A prize draw was held to decide the winner from the participants of the poll. This nautical blue metallic car, part of the Mercedes-Benz Young Classics collection, is in excellent condition and has only 18,200 kilometres on the clock.

This is the second time that Auto Bild Klassik has held the competition. It invited readers to vote on the ‘Classic of the Year’, ‘Classic of the Future’, ‘Find of the Year’, ‘Restoration of the Year’ and ‘Person of the Year’. A total of 13 awards were presented, and 27,023 readers of the magazine and its online edition took part. All the results can be found at www.autobild.de/klassik-lenkrad.