The king no longer drives

By: Rein de Ruiter

King Bhumibol of Thailand died on Thursday at the age of 88. Not only has the world's longest seated monarch gone, but the world is also losing a fanatic Mercedes-Benz collector. His garage in Bangkok has dozens of classics from Das Haus, and he bought one of those copies from me.

Am I a trader? Absolutely not; I don't have to think about it. But I do recognize the gems among the classic cars. About ten years ago I went to Albert, a Mercedes specialist in Nieuw Weerdinge. There I spotted a Mercedes-Benz S-Class - for the connoisseurs among us: an 280SE W116 - from the late 1970s. The exterior of the car was executed in the retinal shattering color Minosa Gelb, and whether that was not strikingly enough equipped with a green fabric interior. The sign on the windshield stated that the factory new Benz had 700 kilometers on the counter. Since I was in a hurry, I didn't pay much attention to it.

Steer wrong

A few months later I was with the Groningen trader again. And damn it: he was still there, that Benz. Specialist Albert growled that the 280SE could not be kicked away. No, not because of the color. “The steering wheel is on the wrong side. Nobody wants it here. ”

Grandmother

Albert also knew the story behind the then flagship from Stuttgart. A wealthy grandmother in Germany had bought a Mercedes-Benz for each of her three children as a surprise. Because the kids lived in Kenya, the cars were supplied with a right-hand steering wheel, including a laundry list of goodies such as air conditioning. But unfortunately. At that time Mercedes-Benz still had unprecedented waiting lists and when the Stars were finally delivered to its Seniorenheim, it turned out to have died. Good advice was expensive. The old people's home was reportedly unable to reach the children and parked the cars in the parking garage. They stayed there for a number of years. When the children finally got a smell from their missed gifts on wheels, they were no longer interested in the generous gifts of 'Mutti'. The dealer who delivered the cars finally picked them up and put them away in his own parking garage. They stood there for years, eating unused dust, until trader Albert from Nieuw Weerdinge saw them and took them to the Netherlands. Two of the cars immediately disappeared into the hands of collectors. But the Mimosa Gelbe W116 remained month to month. "So I'm tired of it now."

Thai collector

I took the car home with the promise to sell it in a country where they could appreciate a steering wheel on the wrong side. An advertisement was placed on a British classic site and the first callers responded quickly, attracted by the virgin state of the S-Class with its unprecedented mileage and ditto color combination. After a week, an English-speaking interested party from The Hague called and asked if 'the yellow car was still for sale'. That was it. He reported that he wanted to come and look on behalf of a Thai collector. If the car were in the state as I described it, someone from Thailand would soon come flying in and buy the car. An hour later he was already on the doorstep with a car with a Corps Diplomatique license plate; it turned out to be the First Secretary of the Thai embassy in The Hague. After a few laps around the 4,96 meter long car, he had seen it. It was new, so he had nothing to say.

Around the block

A week later, the diplomat came again, this time accompanied by the Thai who had flown in, who spoke virtually no English. And although my knowledge of the Thai language is negligible, I thought I could conclude from his happy dances around the W116 that this was the car that 'his boss' absolutely wanted. Of course I got curious about that boss. Because it had to be important enough to sacrifice the precious time of a First Secretary of the Embassy for it. No, the diplomat preferred not to say who that was and the representative was silent in all languages. But suddenly my eye fell on a pin with a man's head pinned to the lapel of the jackets. The penny dropped: this was their boss. None other than King Bhumibol. After that observation, the secretary became a little more relaxed. King Phra Chaoyuhua Bhumibol Adulyadej, the holiest in his country, had an immense collection of Benzen. He had driven the exact same Benz during his student days in Australia and he definitely wanted to add this car from Nieuw Weerdinge to his collection. According to the diplomat, the king and his wife Sirikit would certainly regularly drive through their hometown of Bangkok. How did that go? He called the army in the morning, had them close a number of streets and then went around the block through the empty streets while the people enthusiastically waved at him.

Missed opportunity ... for me

The next morning I delivered the Benz to the embassy. He would be spent immediately to Schiphol to be transported from there in the belly of a Boeing 747 to Bangkok. Quite a costly joke, the representative admitted, but it didn't matter: the king was the owner of the airline. How often King Bhumibol has spoken the 280SE has remained unknown to me. Unfortunately, I never cashed in the cordial invitation to visit the palace and the car collection. Stupid of course, but now it's too late. The king no longer drives.