You always meet twice ...
10/08/2019
My father, born in 1931, with his father's Mercedes-Benz 170 V, seven years his junior, on the Grimsel Pass in 1949. My grandfather bought the car shortly before the war. The car was then taken out of service during the war years, but was revived shortly afterwards.
70 years later, history is repeating itself. Born in 1960, I am standing next to the same type of car as my father back then, albeit in the lowlands. The license plate matches, as I was able to take over "OW 222" from my grandfather, who died in 1975. The metal TCS (Touring Club Switzerland) badge on the radiator grille was probably a "must" for everyone back then.
Now to the few small differences, such as the pants ..., or the full-length bumper and the presumably retrofitted indicators of the later "Va" model.
The shooting position in the current picture is deliberately higher, as today you look through the viewfinder of the cameras, whereas the 6x6 Rolleiflex still had a shaft viewfinder at that time, in which the photographer looked at the focusing screen from above and therefore held the camera at about navel height.
You can also see clearly visible signs of climate change: whereas there used to be snow in the background, today there are cornfields .... (which is of course not true, because while the first shot was taken at almost 2000 meters above sea level, in the second we are at just under 500 meters above sea level).
P.S. The article on the Mercedes-Benz 170 Va has of course already been published ...
