Today's "Mercedes" are just a pice of ugliness. No style, just made for people who just want to impress with the name of the brand.
Very old models at least if they whreren't in the had the looks, they had the reability of the brand.
The W123 (a.k.a "Cobra" in Romania) had a certain look (not very beatiful, bot not ugly), but for sure it was good car worth of the brand's name.
In Bucharest there are 2 x 380SL. Both automatic transimision. In terms of look... not only does they do have the appeal, but the overpass any of today's model.
I'm not such a big fan of the brand, but the very old models from them for sure where good. And W123 was a very wade range of cars. Today's cars don't seem so versatile in terms of options.
U.S.A. cars had one problem I think: to big engines. I agree that outside densly populated areas, in U.S.A. (or Canada or even Mexico) you can't go with small engine cars like in Europe. So a 3-4 liters (maybe 5 if you want a really big car or a pick-up truck) is needed, but when you put as a standard a 5-6 liters engine is arelady too much in the late '60's.
But do you have any ideea, what where the most relaible U.S.A brands up to the '50's?
You needed oil change only because you migh had leaks or also because the qualty of the oil wasn't so good back then - plain mineral oil, no aditives.
If you want to run a classic car I've heard that you must be careful, at least here in Europe, because they put Ethanol on it and very old cars don't like it.
Here is something to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-a...c_transmission
And let's not forget about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTZeP5f20PA
http://hudsonterraplane.com/tech/193...ndTechInfo.pdf