One fill-up, please ...
08/29/2015
You drive to the gas station, the car has been rented and it should be returned with a full tank. But then. Where is the gas cap?
Nowadays this is rarely a problem, because most cars have the fuel filler inlet at the rear right. In the past, it was fitted where it was closest to the tank and could be hidden in a wide variety of places, for example at the very back or even at the front (in a rear-engined car).
This meant that even in the products of one manufacturer, the fuel filler flap would always "appear" in a different place, as in the Mercedes-Benz luxury saloons of the sixties and seventies.
On the Mercedes-Benz 600, the flap was located to the left of the right headlight ...
... and even covered by the central locking system.
On the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 , you had to look for the fuel filler cap (pictured above) under the rear license plate.
And in the Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 , the Stuttgart-based manufacturer switched to a tank positioned further forward for safety reasons ...
... the fuel filler cap was now located on the rear right flank (as is usual today).
Incidentally, the tank capacity was also different. The 600 had 112 liters, the 300 SEL 6.3 105 and the 450 SEL 6.9 had to make do with 96 liters. What sounds like a lot was, in practice, just enough for a range of 500 km (or less) with a spirited driving style, because the mighty eight-cylinder engines were not exactly the economical type, which is not surprising given the high vehicle weights ...
And one more note: the fine gentlemen of the past didn't necessarily have to remember the position of the fuel filler flap, because back then there was still the friendly gas station attendant and he hopefully knew where to fill up with gasoline ...
