Herman, the Mercedes 300SE — Car number 9

Herman (the German!) is owned by Tony and Karen Sinclair and has quite a comprehensive history.  He is car number nine.

Herman was built as a genuine right hand drive car on the 12th of November 1965, and finished in Red on what is known as a W112 chassis. It was first sold to a Captain G B Norrie of The Ham, Wantage, Berkshire, who ran the car for a couple of years as a member of the Armed Forces in Germany. However on the 8th of September 1967 he imported it back into to the UK, and two years later in November 1969 sold it onto a Mr F R Peverelle of 175 Braidley Road, Bournemouth,  Hampshire. That owner changed “Herman’s” colour to the Blue it now is, and he owned it for the next 40 years! It was one of only 92 RH drive Cabriolets out of an overall total of 708 Mercedes 300SE ever built.

Mr Peverelle kept the car on the road and garaged at his residence at “White Wings”, 4 Mornish Road, Branksome Park, Poole. However it finally came off the road in 1988 for some minor reason and was never used again for the next 28 years.  Reputedly by now in his early 90’s Mr Peverelle sold the car to his nurse, Miss JCA Rodrigues (of the same address) in September 2009. However since it was a non- runner at the time it was never actually put back on the road during her brief ownership. It was then finally bought by me 3 years later in January 2012 still with only 57,819 genuine miles on the clock. We assigned the number plate KS1111 to it. It was therefore effectively a 2 owner car from new when we acquired it.

Its first major trip was the Columbia to Argentina tour of 2012, and whilst the car was fine the driver wasn’t when I had to bail out at Cusco due to illness! However on its return in late 2012 to the UK the car underwent a 2 ½ year body off restoration, and was on the road again in good time for the 2016 Los Angeles to Boston pan-America trip. This time both car and driver performed faultlessly, something we hope to repeat this year in the Asia tour!!