Mercedes-Benz Ponton
Restoration Projects:

Thierry writes: I bought the car dismantled in 1998.  These are the first two photos I took when I was finished cleaning the worst of the grunge off it.  

The body was used as a hen house and the two seats were in the owner's kitchen!  I had to make the wheels turn again as the brakes were stuck in the drums.  Then I put new tubes in the tires and inflated them for the revival trip.  I pulled the car home with a big truck full of parts retrieved from everywhere around the owner's house.  Everybody was laughing at me arriving at home.  My wife hated me when she saw the car among our flowers.  I had a few long fun weekends of cleaning and refurbishing.

This is the 190 with the 220S trunk badge that I found at the beginning in the bits around the hen house!  The old tail light lenses are faded from the sun.  Finally, I got the car restored and running at the end of 2000.

Then, my wife was proud and liked the car very much.  I had to fight to sell it.

I used the car until September, 2001 to go to work every day.  Finally, I sold it to my friend Pierre, who will take care of its future.

Foreground: 1958 Mercedes-Benz Type 190 sedan formerly owned and restored by Thierry (see above).  Behind the 190 is a Type 220S sedan owned by Thierry.  In the background is a 1957 Mercedes-Benz Type 220S project car (on trailer).

Thierry writes:  In January of 2002, I finally made a deal to buy 10 year's worth of Mercedes parts in storage from another fellow 220S Ponton fan.  Now I have got the lot of parts and three frames at home to refurbish, and one body just for painting.

This 1957 220S will be made new again with the parts of the 1957 220S in the photo below.  Then all the parts, and the remaining body should make the third 220S with a lot of time and effort.

So, I still have a lot of work to enjoy for a while, but I can still drive this 220S in the meantime!

You didn't get lost?!
Best Regards, Thierry / February 18, 2002

June 24, 2002:  The 220S is starting to look roadworthy again.  Maybe it still needs some glass and seats and interior trim.  Thierry says it should be finished in another month or so.  He has two more 220S sedans to work on after that.

Here is the 1957 220S at 99%, because there is always something to fix!  It is missing the mirrors.  Now, this Mercedes-Benz is ready for driving to work everyday.

New floor panels being welded in place.

U-shaped sub-frame (the so-called "Fahrschemel"), rubber mounted to the shell at three points. It will hold the engine, gearbox, suspension and recirculating ball steering.

Steering, dashboard, instrument cluster, new wiring harness.

Exhaust manifold and carburetors.

Exhaust manifold and carburetors.

Sub-frame.

Sub-frame (front view) with engine.

Sub-frame (rear view) with engine.

Body being lowered onto the sub-frame.

I found my choke cable to be rusted (as most are) and could not make anything from it.  I went to my donor car but it had the same damage (of course!).  So I finally found out that the engine hood cable was the same and is never damaged.  Furthermore it is longer, so making it into a new cable for the choke was possible.  The results are very good.  I also made it a little longer to better adjust it when it is finally installed on the carburetors.

I had quite a difficult time removing the water temperature adaptor. Finally I had to drill it out.  I also drilled out the replacement unit from a donor cylinder head (see photo above).