Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet B: hidden in plain sight

By Aaron McKay

| 24 Nov 2023

Classic & Sports Car – Mercedes-Benz 170S: phoenix from the ashes

What survived those final, dark days of WW2 Germany was usually a matter of cruel chance.

Streets missing buildings like broken teeth spoke to fate’s arbitrary but absolute power.

Under what had become, by 1945, the certainty of loss, and while American bombs smouldered and Soviet lines were bolstered, Germans began picking up whichever pieces were left.

Stepping into this Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet B, you are greeted with wood veneers and chrome details

Miraculously, one such piece was part of the Mercedes-Benz Untertürkheim plant in American-controlled Stuttgart.

A mere month after the thumping of shells had subsided, its gates were opened to a skeleton workforce under US supervision.

While clearing debris and running all sorts of vehicles – including many American ones – through the hastily named Stuttgart Ordnance Repair Shop, the employees at Untertürkheim began salvaging meaningful elements of the mid-sized 170V model’s production lines.

‘Falling just short of extravagant, the interior simply feels well appointed and generously proportioned’

This glimmer of hope brightened into significance when, in January 1946, the US granted the facility a production permit.

It would be a far cry from the glamorous Mercedes-Benz output of the 1930s, but the 170V offered not only salvation for the company, but also the vehicles sorely needed for the long-term rebuilding of Germany.

This remarkably advanced model was one of a new line that Mercedes-Benz had introduced in the mid-1930s, on the momentum of the freshly formed Daimler-Benz in 1926.

The Mercedes-Benz’s folded roof wipes out rear vision

A timely car appealing to a contemporary middle class, the 170V continued the marque’s reputation for smooth-running, robust engines in a range of neatly proportioned factory steel bodies, for a price attractive enough to have earned 91,048 sales between 1935 and 1942.

But it was the W136’s chassis that marked it out and gave it invaluable staying power when production resumed in 1946.

Instead of a traditional U-section frame and rigid axles, it employed a new cruciform backbone design with all-round independent suspension that was a development on the theme of its 1931-’35 W15 predecessor.

There were four-wheel hydraulic brakes, too.

The Mercedes-Benz 170’s body used some of the pre-war 230’s panel tooling

In the immediate months after production recommenced, the focus was squarely on utilitarian vehicles – vans, pick-ups, ambulances – but passenger cars began filtering on to the lines from 1947.

While the Mannheim plant, also in American control, and Gagganau, in French territory, chugged back into the production of trucks, Untertürkheim began rolling out cars by the thousands, with final assembly arranged at the nearby Sindelfingen facility.

That glimmer became a floodlight at Hanover’s Technical Export Fair in May 1949, as a range of W136 passenger cars resembling almost something of the pre-war fullness made its debut – and, for the first time since the war, was available for export.

Mercedes’ new-model onslaught at the 1952 Geneva Salon: 170S, 220 and 300 (left to right)

New were the 170D and 170S, cars developed out of rational hope: the 170D offered an oil-burning version of the standard car’s 1697cc ‘four’, to capitalise on the substantially cheaper diesel in post-war Germany, while the 170 ‘Super’ W191 excited those looking for something a little extra to the newly reinstated run-of-the-mill saloon.

Fitted with a longer, wider body inheriting much of the pre-war 230’s lines, the 170S also had a slightly more powerful 1767cc engine, bigger brakes and some keen technical developments on the W136’s basic chassis.

Chief engineer Hans Nibel echoed his front suspension design work for the 1937-’39 Grand Prix cars on this new range-topper: twin transverse leaf springs were replaced by coil springs and double wishbones, and telescopic dampers were fitted all round.

The profile of the four-seater Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet B, here fully restored to concours level, is more stately than the sleeker lines of the 2+2 A

Both wishbones were mounted novelly on a pivot that ran through the chassis frame and was suppressed fore and aft by a range of rubber bushes.

Some luxury-focused features returned, too, including an optional heater and outward dignities in the form of chromed, horizontal bonnet louvres, heftier bumpers and neatly integrated semaphore trafficators.

By the time ‘our’ 1951 170S Cabriolet B was made, more chrome had been lavished upon these cars’ interiors, too.

The 170V had received most of the same mechanical upgrades and a new, six-cylinder 220 derivative, with headlights fashionably grafted into broader wings, was also introduced, along with its own 2+2 Cabriolet A and full four-seater Cabriolet B models.

The Mercedes’ 1767cc sidevalve ‘four’ is good for 52bhp and up to 80mph

The 300 ‘Adenauer’ arrived the same year, punctuating a line in the sand for Mercedes-Benz that was almost as distinct as West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard’s dropping of all price and ration controls against the new Deutschmark in 1948: this was the beginning of the country’s economic miracle, with the cars to match.

Even so, this wasn’t quite yet a golden era.

Financial uncertainty plagued almost every corner of German life, even with the Marshall Plan agreed upon for the West, while under the shadows of vast Soviet projects such as eastern Berlin’s Stalinallee boulevard, protests were checked with brutal force.

And everywhere, ideological and moral questions nagged at the national spirit.

Folding the roof of the Mercedes-Benz 170S reveals another layer of charm

At the epicentre of the brewing Cold War, spies increasingly pulled at strings in the hope of steering an advantageous course using any means necessary, including the persuasive power of prestige vehicles.

By 1955, this 170S Cabriolet B would have been four years old, but to MI6 codebreaker Howard Greville and those whom he obliquely looked to recruit into the espionage fold, it would have been a shining symbol of success – or, perhaps more importantly, the right way to go.

Operating out of an apartment in Charlottenburg in the Westend district of Berlin, still largely in a trashed post-war state and without lighting or heating, Greville’s short commute to MI6’s Olympiastadion Berlin headquarters would have offered a bit of the glamour promised by undercover work.

‘This graceful tourer glides around, revelling in the performance it has to spare – albeit not in great quantities’

More so on occasional runs farther out, all over Europe, where he would need to portray some sense of authority when visiting communication stations, while enjoying reliable, relatively fast transport.

A bechromed Mercedes-Benz cabriolet in the statesman’s mould would have achieved just that.

By the time Greville took this car home with him in 1956, its export papers suggest that it had racked up 88,000km – some 55,000 miles.

That’s an astonishing amount during a time when petrol was so scarce that jerry cans were standard-carry items and the diesel 170D was outselling all other Mercedes-Benz models by a considerable margin.

The wide, slim-rimmed steering wheel in the Mercedes-Benz 170S

So while the DM12,850 170S would have been a relatively rare symbol of wealth – costing some six times the median-average annual earnings of a contemporary German – this one certainly put in the time.

Greville, by all accounts, seems to have done so, too.

After his capture in WW2, he began to leak information out of his camp and later befriended a chief codebreaker of the German Admiralty, which led him, indirectly like most, into recruitment by the British intelligence service.

The Mercedes’ stylish dials sit ahead of the driver

When Greville returned to his home in Brentford, Essex, the Mercedes was registered SXC 29, and it remained with him until 1972, whereupon its subsequent owner initiated a full restoration.

It took nearly two decades of work, arriving finally at the concours level it largely retains today and, much like modern-day Berlin, there is only the slightest, at times eerily elusive, whiff of its wartorn past.

Its simple, stately charm seems innocent today in the bustling streets of south-west London.

The Siemens radio in this classic Mercedes’ cabin adds to the feeling of prosperity

In pedestrians’ looks of curious adoration there is a hint of the awe that it might have once conjured along the Reichstrasse, and sitting high up within its chrome-trimmed open waistline still endows those inside with a peculiar feeling of self-importance.

It eases down the road in a dignified fashion.

The sidevalve ‘four’ thrums softly ahead, revealing little of its efforts through the strong chassis and rubber-mounted gearbox.

Full synchromesh means that gears flow smoothly via the long, angled lever, and steering its matching wide-rimmed white wheel is light enough to be considered easy.

London’s cobbles echo those of post-war Berlin

The cabin is framed on the inside with rich wood veneers and, as a later 170S, a liberal dressing of chrome.

A locking glovebox and Siemens fitted radio speak to aspirations that stretched beyond practicalities such as the twin spare wheels at the back.

Falling just short of extravagant, the interior simply feels well appointed and generously proportioned, roof up or down; its additional width and wheelbase make it a comfortable car without the imposing footprint of the pre-war 540 flagship.

This ex-MI6 agent’s Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet B was restored over two decades

With the roof folded, vision is obscured completely by the vast overhang of the fabric top, although the gutsy engine is just about enough to accompany direction changes with a positive surge ahead.

Reportedly good for 80mph, the 52bhp 170S feels almost brisk – if not entirely capable of testing its chassis limits.

Smaller 15in wheels and a wider rear track were efforts to help contain Mercedes’ infamous swing-axle snap.

Combined with an accuracy in the steering that ebbs into discouraging weight, it seems well within a conscious driver’s control – in the dry, at least.

The 170S helped Mercedes-Benz to enter a shining new era after WW2

For the most part, this upright, graceful open tourer likes to glide around as if in ceremony, riding softly on its rubber-bushed suspension and drivetrain, and revelling in the performance it has to spare – albeit not in great quantities.

It embodies a feeling of modest but earnest accomplishment, reflecting the deep-rooted ambition at Mercedes-Benz in those early post-war years to rebuild bigger and better, piece by piece.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Classic Chrome and Carola Daimler

Factfile

Mercedes-Benz 170S Cabriolet B

Sold/number built 1949-’51/2433
Construction steel backbone chassis, steel body
Engine iron-block, alloy-head, sidevalve 1767cc ‘four’, single Solex carburettor
Max power 52bhp @ 4000rpm
Max torque 82.5lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, at front by double wishbones rear swing-arms; coil springs, telescopic dampers f/r
Steering worm and roller
Brakes drums
Length 14ft 7⅜in (4455mm)
Width 5ft 6¼in (1684mm)
Height 5ft 4¼in (1633mm)
Wheelbase 9ft 4in (2845mm)
Weight 2684lb (1217kg, saloon)
Mpg 23.7 (saloon)
0-60mph 29 secs (saloon)
Top speed 75mph (saloon)
Price new DM12,850
Price now £125,000*