I find it amusing that Mercedes never offered yellow exterior paint on any R230 as a standard color option, but that Matchbox made a yellow SL55 AMG.

It was a limited edition of only 15,500 units, so I’m sure this will be worth something someday (grin)

[I’m being facetious but most of my matchbox cars got run over when I would leave them in the driveway after playing with them]

The Banana came with some of the previous owner’s documentation. There were service records from about 2014, and records of the original purchase, but nothing much about the first ten years of service.

The car was purchased by an (apparently) very successful Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. He seems to have collected a number of classic cars, including an 300SL gullwing, but he sold it and bought a different one because the first one was too nice to drive.

I like him already.

In reading through the paperwork, I was surprised to see the total cost of all the options. The base car was $141,000 and was bought in Tampa, Florida, but there were a number of upgrades made as well.

The Kicherer SLR-style hood was a $14,000 upgrade, and the AMG factory modified exhaust system was $15,000. The other costs such as the carbon fiber interior, panoramic side mirrors, Bluetooth and trunk spoiler bought the total cost to $198,237.

My handy-dandy online inflation calculator says that money is worth over $300,000 in 2022 dollars.

Sheesh. I think I got a deal.

So, I’ve given up on getting any kind of answer out of NC DMV as to why they won’t accept the title for The Banana without a notarized signature, so it is on its way back to California.

I was so looking forward to driving it this weekend, so perhaps next.

The Banana is supposed to arrive tonight, so I wanted to go get it registered and get a tag for it.

It was not to be.

The seller had sent me the title and usually it is a simple process to register the car, but when I got to the DMV they wouldn’t accept it as it wasn’t notarized.

There was a space for a notary to sign that was blank, so I reached out to the seller who pointed out that in Montana, where the car was registered, a notary is not required if the seller is a company (in this case, an LLC).

I showed this to the folks at the DMV office, and they told me they had to consult a book published by the NADA, and that book did not include the company exception.

I knew better than to fight with the DMV (it’s really not the fault of the folks in the registration office, but DMV administration) so I posted an angry tweet and chatted with the seller, who said they could get it notarized.

It’s past the cut-off for overnight letters so I’ll send it off tomorrow and wait for it to come back and I’ll try again.

Okay. I’m older, and so it is time to get the sports car.

In all seriousness, I have been into cars since I was young and I’ve always wanted to buy a performance automobile. But I am also cheap, and so I like to get a good deal.

A friend of mine has turned me on to a website called Bring a Trailer (BaT). Apparently it started out as a blog about cool cars for sale on eBay, and it has grown into the leading online auction site for classic and collectable cars.

Of call the cars I’ve owned, I’ve really enjoyed the convertibles. I had a yellow 1978 MGB that I put nearly 60,000 miles on in three years (driving it cross country twice) and I still think yellow is the best color for a sports car, as well as a black 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. I’ve also owned a number of Mercedes sedans (mainly W108s), with the most modern car being a 2004 C230 Sport.

My wife doesn’t like convertibles, which puts me in a quandary, as unless it is raining or snowing the top is always down on my cars. I don’t really like the look of convertibles with the top up, so I wanted a car with a retractable hard top. Thus when the top is up it will look like it isn’t a convertible, but when I’m in it the top can be quickly lowered.

The earliest hard top convertible I know about is the Ford Fairlane Skyliner, but there have been others since. The one I always desired was the Mercedes SL, an S-Class high performance roadster. The models that have depreciated the most are the fourth generation SL, those from 2002-2008, known as the R230.

I ended up buying a 2003 Mercedes SL55 AMG, in silver over charcoal with just over 18,000 miles, that I won on a BaT auction.

I love the look of Mercedes racing silver, and I ended up calling this car The Shark. It was a solid buy, with basically one owner, low miles and all available options.

There is a great book on the R230 available digitally on Amazon for $10 that I can highly recommend. I learned from that book that the 2003 model year was the highest production year for the car (it was introduced in 2002 in Europe but 2003 in the US) and that silver and black are the most common colors. For the 2003 models there were 14 different color options and three of them were various shades of black and four of them were shades of silver.

Now silver over red is the classic 300SL color and I would probably have been satisfied if that was the color for The Shark, so I’ve been curious to see what other color options might show up for sale.

As I was to find out, there was one in particular I wanted.