Mercedes products are a strange thing for me…either I love them or I hate them, there is no in-between. For example: I love the W210 body E55 AMG, I think that for a sporting sedan it combines the best of class and badass. I pretty much can’t stomach the entire W124 line. And there’s no real basis besides what my eyes interpret, so just chalk it up to pure opinion and nothing more. Outside of the normal “good” old Mercedes like the 300SL and the 450 SLC 5.0 models, a lot of old Mercedes tend to feel the same to me. They all have the same detail that catches me every time: the color-coded hubcaps with the large three-pointed start adorning the center cap. Do I like them? Not normally. But look at this one, because this car is the “good” to the version I normally write off as “bad”: the fintail Mercedes.

Chassis code W111 ran from 1958 to 1971 in two separate designs: the fintail sedan and the coupe. I used to spot a pea-green fintail Mercedes fairly often when I was in elementary school, moving along at a stately pace, and I couldn’t stand it. The fins were too small to be outrageous and too large to be ignored, the hubcaps bothered me, the whitewalls bothered me…don’t judge, this is coming from the mind of a 10-year-old at the time. The aging process has a way of modifying your tastes as the years go on, and seeing this coupe in a nice blue, with the fins all but gone, hits the right notes. What’s the call…did age finally give me wisdom, or do I just appreciate the vehicle differently because it has two less doors and the fins are missing?