Back in the salad days of the Nineties dot-com boom, we eked out a living painting sets for television and movies. Tasks included making many new things look old, which included building a ship set inside a restored WWII-vintage Liberty ship. Why? Glossy new stuff looks phony on film, because glossy new stuff does not surround us in real life. The reasoning behind the ship set inside a ship remains mysterious. What we do know is that this Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster was far from glossy, and exhibited patina that only time and use could create. A dusty entry in a field of glossy contenders, this car seemed to draw more interest than any other car under the white tent at the 2011 Gooding and Company auction in Scottsdale. Whether or not a car with a roughly-adjusted-for-inflation $78,000 original MSRP is worth the $951,500 selling price is up to you to decide. The appeal of this exquisitely worn roadster was that it invited passersby to get in and drive.
