The whole story began with my father and some Type 170V and 220S Mercedes-Benz models on the internet. For more than 50 years we had a little garage in the basement that my grandfather, and a little later my father used doing little repairs on various cars. Up until now, all of them were produced much later than the Ponton series.

After my grandfather passed away two years ago, we had new ideas about what to do with the old garage. Let's restore a Ponton!

I have to say something very honest now. We are definitely not a professional garage, and we have to do many things manually (where others use machines) and the work is more of a hobby than a business, but we have the expectation of being as close as possible to professional restorers - even if it costs us many more hours to complete the job.

We started with a black 1957 220S Ponton sedan that my father bought after it was imported to Germany. It was on the west coast of the USA (near San Francisco) before it was purchased and shipped back home. Many parts had been removed by a third party before we bought it, which proved to be the hardest challenge during the whole process because it took a long time to collect and organize all the missing pieces. It took more than eight months to complete the works including many problems involving oil pressure, carburetors, and ignition. In the end we were successful! Here are two photos:

The 220S was finished in September 2010. In April 2010, I bought a Type 219 Ponton sedan with a Webasto sliding sunroof and a two-tone paint job. The 219 was out of service for about 30 years. This one entered the garage in October 2010 and was completely dismantled and reassembled from scratch. These works are still ongoing but here are two photos:

To learn more about the Type 219 Ponton project, visit my blog: http://mbzponton.blogspot.com

Have Fun!

Udo and Frank Mertens