600: No Matter What You Call It, Its the Ultimate!

Still getting my “sea legs” on this RLC thing.

Throughout my li’l life I’ve met more than a few people who have accused me of being “slow on the uptake.” Those people are right: your bumble blogger often tends to be a bit of a “space case” and, while in some areas I have exceptionally high-powered perception, in others I’m often clueless about basic things other people pick up on. So it’s only been over the last week that I’ve figured out that sometimes, when you buy a car from the Red Line Club, you’re engaging in a “pre-sale,” paying for a car now that you’ll get later.

Such was the case with one I’ve been waiting for since I joined the RLC, which went on sale last Tuesday. It sounds crazy-and it is!-but after that experience with the Gulf Porsche 959, I actually took half a day off work to be 100% certain that I was Johnny-on-the-Spot the moment the clock ran out and this car was available! I was that determined not to miss it! This car is one of the reasons I decided to pull the trigger on joining the club: I saw this previewed online and knew it was coming and I wanted one! I bought 2…which is to say, I paid for 2. Allegedly I won’t actually see them until August.

One look at this 1:64 scale model and its obvious what makes it special: name another 1:64 die-cast with 4 opening doors! I can think of one: the ‘61 Lincoln convertible that was also an RLC Exclusive from a while back! Is there another? I’ve seen a few 1:43 Corgi and Dinky models out there with 4 opening doors, and I believe Tomica may have made something in 1:64 with this kind of detail because…I dunno, that just sounds like something Tomica would do. And there are the slightly larger (1:60, maybe?) Impy “Lone Star” models from the ‘60s which had opening doors, hoods, trunk lids, and steerable wheels, but even in that line, there were no sedans with 4 opening doors! That makes this car special!

Special not just because of the 4 opening doors, however; also because of the car it is a model of! The Mercedes-Benz W100, “officially” designated the model 600 and also known as the “Pullman” or “Grosser” depending on the body, is a very special car indeed! In production for just shy of 20 years (from the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s) with very few changes to its appearance (because none were needed!), the 600 is a “star car” that has been owned by the best and the worst of the world’s power-elite throughout history. Often seen in films whenever an imposing, slightly sinister executive car was called for, the 600 was made in short and long wheelbase versions, and each was customized to its buyer’s specifications, so no 2 are exactly alike. The SOHC fuel injected 6.3 litre V8 that powered it, designated the M100, was the 1^st V8 developed by MBZ in the post-war era, and was more than enough to power the nearly 3-ton behemoth to…well, whatever speed its owner wanted! Equipped with an air-ride suspension and a bumper to bumper hydraulic fluid system which operated everything from the steering to the power windows and power seats to the sunroof, the 600 was extremely complex, and required high-levels of expensive maintenance, both then and now. Most 600s were equipped with such amenities as front and rear air-conditioners, front and rear radios, rear seat bars, and rear seat trays with dedicated lighting. When introduced in 1963, it was the most expensive car in the world, and it held on to that title off and on throughout its production life.

Such a bespoke car is bound to create confusion for those trying to identify them, and Mattel appears to be no exception, for they marketed this car as a “Pullman,” and I believe that is incorrect. Any Mercedes experts out there who know differently, please correct me, but its my understanding that the “Pullman” model was the long wheelbase limosine, which featured either a spacer between the front and rear doors, or a 3^rd door on the side. The Hot Wheels model appears to my eye to be the short wheelbase model: still a large and imposing car, and the one I think is the best looking of the body styles offered. In fact, this gives Hot Wheels more bragging rights, as an actual pullman model with the space between the doors would probably have made this intricate die-cast easier to manufacture with 4 opening doors; that they avoided that cheat and gave us the body with adjacent doors, all of which open, is mighty impressive!

Unfortunately, however, I have yet to see it in person; one thing that concerns me is that the factory press photos you see in this post, pulled from the Mattel Creations website, show “pooling” of the paint around the door edges; my hope is that that was a pre-production problem that was worked out before the final release. The interior is extremely detailed, featured quilt-pattern upholstery and a wet bar in the back, which the real cars often had. The wheels they chose are the “turbine style” seen on some other HW premium models of racing cars; while I certainly would have preferred a set of color-keyed hubcaps bearing a 3-pointed star, such detail is beyond the reasonable scope of even the most premium Hot Wheels car, and I think the wheels “work” with this model, even if they are a little modern looking for the design.

Hats off to Mattel for presenting this car in dark metallic blue rather than in a dull black or staid silver, which were the obvious choices: though most real 600s were black or silver, dark blue was not an uncommon color on these cars; I might have preferred a maroon color which was also common on the 1:1 scale models, but this blue raises no complaints, especially with the “biscuit”-colored interior. Overall this is a fantastic model, one of the best 1:64 cars I’ve ever seen, and it comes in a multiple-boxed jewel case, as one would expect from a premium model like this.

As with the real thing, this car wasn’t cheap: buying 2 of them with postage and tax took close to $100 out of me. Even so, there was no way I could pass it up…and now, all I have to do is…wait!