Classic roadsters can be fun, offering open air motoring, great engine sounds, lively vintage handling, and the fun of driving around in a classic open top sports car. They can also be cars that will try your patience, need a lot of looking after, a fair degree of owner involvement and mechanical knowledge, and are not always dependable.
This is true for a lot of lower-to-mid range open sports cars but there is a car in the classic roadster category that offers all the fun of open air sports car driving with the elements of reliability and comfort to the experience. That car is the Mercedes-Benz W113 “Pagoda” Roadsters.
Our Pick of the Day is one of these cars in an early model which I personally prefer, a 1964 Mercedes-Benz 230SL located at a dealer in Chicago, Illinois. They describe the car as white but I think it might actually be the correct Mercedes color of Light Ivory. The interior is a correct MB-Tex black and both look to be in good shape.
This 230SL is powered by a 2.3 liter fuel injected SOHC inline 6 cylinder engine and is happily backed by a somewhat rare 4 speed manual transmission, something that transforms the 230SL into more of a sports car that at GT.
While the listing does not provide a lot of information, the photos do. This looks to be a nice driver level 230SL with no obvious flaws and one that has been cared for. Indicators of this are the clean interior, the tidy though not spotless engine compartment, and the utter lack of changes from stock. This 230SL also still has its hard and soft top and while the soft top looks to have a rear window in need of a cleaning or polishing, I would not be surprised if it is fixable.
This car also has two nice options: a rear jump seat and A/C. The jump seat is for children only but the AC is a nice thing to have.
An additional piece of information is all of the documentation which look to include not only its manuals but also every other document that the car got when new. I love when cars still have all of these documents as they tell the story of the cars history and are just neat to have and also effect the cars value in a positive way. Oh and it also includes its factory toolkit.
The photos cover a lot of the cars details and show a car that looks to be in good shape. The one thing I might ask the dealer for is pictures of the underside of the car to check for rust or poor rust repair. If the car checks out I would have a pre-purchase inspection done and if all is good buy it, especially at the very fair seeming asking price of $65,990.
To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day.
