Stories and Sunday outings
The largest and most important Swiss classic car trade fair, Swiss Classic World, is over, the weekend was intense but also highly interesting. After what felt like hundreds of conversations with visitors, dealers and "always-suspects", Swiss Classic World came to an end on Sunday evening. Some stories have been told many times before.
Some are still up to date: who bought what and where, which dealer made which bargain or sold which. And then there are the numerous memories that are recounted. Clearly, the abundance of classics inspires some people to recall their encounters with this or that car in their past. Most of these are everyday stories, but sometimes they are downright hair-raising tales of robbery - and very rarely do they give you a deep insight into the everyday history of the automotive past.
One such story came to mind this year when I was tidying up. The story comes from a colleague who bought an unrestored Adler Trumpf with an Autenrieth four-window convertible body 35 years ago. This was due to an advertisement in the Bernese Bund, the daily newspaper of the federal capital. It stated: "For sale: Adler, CHF 6000" and the corresponding address.
That would have been very expensive for a typewriter, but it could have been a motorcycle, an expensive one at that, but it was, as suspected: a car! It belonged to a dairyman in Bern Bümpliz, a milk and cheese dealer on the outskirts of Bern. He had bought the car from the Adler stand at the Geneva Motor Show in 1936 for 12,000 francs, so half the price - 6,000 in his advertisement - seemed fair to him. The car had survived the war because it had been converted into a delivery van using simple means and had never been decommissioned.
The colleague fetched the car, fixed it up again, which took little effort - the car had been garaged under pressure from the dairyman's wife in the 1960s: "You'd be ashamed with such an old Benne!" - and then drove back to Bümplitz one day to meet the old owner. He explained to him that back then, in the 1930s, as a small to medium-sized businessman, you would be looked at askance if you took a trip in your car on a Sunday. That was not appropriate!
The father of the first owner had already fiercely resisted the idea of the 36-year-old junior buying a canary yellow Mercedes 170V at the 1936 show. The color was far too conspicuous! The Adler, on the other hand, was gray and therefore fine. A car was always a statement that not everyone liked. And the milk dealer was the figure in the neighborhood that people depended on. So any sign that he was treating himself to a luxury with the profit was not appreciated.
The first owner knew this, and so the family never left home together. They always set off on foot in one direction, while he drove his Adler in the other, with his suit and business portfolio under his arm as camouflage. The rest of the family only got in outside the city, unobserved by the neighbors, and they enjoyed a ride together in the Adler Trumpf. The seats inside were occupied by the adults. According to legend, the children made themselves comfortable in the folded-back top of the car. Different times and a wonderful story, which I will explore in more depth one day. The car still exists today...
