Mercedes-Benz 540K (W29)

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Milmart
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Mercedes-Benz 540K (W29)

Post by Milmart » Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:15 am

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A very large Mercedes Benz automobile rolled into the city from the east and pulled up at the Cadle Tabernacle at the corner of New Jersey and Ohio streets.The car was to be a prop to drum up interest in a war bond rally and classical musical concert scheduled at the Cadle that night.

The 10,000-seat Cadle, built in 1921 in the style of the Alamo, was the city's de facto Convention Center. A war bond was a loan to the government, and citizens were encouraged to buy them to help finance the nation's war debt.People who bought war bonds got free admission to the concert and were allowed to sit in the Hitler car and have their photo taken. The Mercedes Benz was billed as Hitler's "personal" car, his "sport" car. Some American paratroopers found it parked at Hitler's mountain hideout at Berchtesgaden earlier in the year as they were overrunning the Nazis.

The car was a two-door convertible with room for just two people but was still enormous. It was 17 feet long. With its armor plating, it weighed 5,170 pounds. Even so it could go 120 mph, which would have been fast enough to qualify for the 1946 Indy 500. The car was blue with blue leather seats. It had a four-speed manual transmission. The horn was not what you'd expect from Hitler. It played eight notes of a song, according to an Indianapolis Star report. The song was not identified.
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A Star reporter named Sue Mellett was allowed to ride in the car from Knightstown to Indianapolis, probably to generate publicity. The headline was: "Girl Reporter Gets Thrill of Her Lifetime." Mellett wasn't allowed to drive but "only to hold the steering wheel as we roared down the road," she reported. She wrote that she "imagined that Hitler, who drove the car himself, must have liked the feeling of power right in his hands, as well as ruling half of Europe."
https://www.indystar.com/story/life/201 ... 880705001/

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