Filename: www.mbzponton.org/valueadded/other/hydrak_John_Flory.txt Revised: 30-jun-2007 Created: 29-jun-2007 From: John Flory To: editor@mbzponton.org Subject: mbzponton website Date: Jun 29, 2007 9:31 AM Thanks for the mbzponton website. In 1958, my father bought a Mercedes-Benz Type 220S Ponton sedan and took European delivery on it at the factory, in Stuttgart I think, before having it shipped to New York. It was cream with red leather upholstery, Hydrak, and fog lamps I believe. He kept it for about 15 years and roughly 170,000 miles. A wonderful, comfortable car, whose only weak point was the Hydrak, which worked very well but needed replacement about every 30,000 miles with clocklike regularity. I drove the car LOT, and certainly don't remember that using the Hydrak system was as complicated as your article http://www.mbzponton.org/valueadded/other/hydrak1.htm makes it sound. As I recall, ours worked seamlessly, smooth shifts were a breeze without any special efforts. You just shifted it and drove. I do recall the noise that it made, and that one could not let one's hand ride on the shift lever. I think my father liked it too, because I don't recall any mention of converting it to regular manual shift. My parents' cars were all manual shift, so he would have had no hesitation converting it if he had been unhappy with Hydrak. Im my humble opinion, the reasons that it was not popular were probably that it was "different", cost extra, and broke too often. I have owned 12 manual shift cars since driving the 220S and never had to replace a clutch or transmission. By the way, the seating in that car was amazing. You could drive all day in complete comfort and not be at all stiff when you got out. They probably had an orthopedic expert design it. While we owned the 220S we lived in Ithaca, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Portola Valley, California. Best Regards, John Flory Essex, Connecticut john.flory@snet.net June 29, 2007