Urgent Request: Join me in Sonoma for PPI

[offroad-world]

Does it still have the South Park stickers all over the back?

[Gelande]

That's a different truck Chris.

That was Robins actual car, this one is not. It was owned by him, but it was bought for his family members.

Upon some further research it appears that this black car was bought by him but gifted to his first wife / son (she left him a bit after that) at the time and then sold off at 15k miles or so. So mostly this truck has been with other owners.

The blue truck with the South Park stickers has a bunch of miles on it and was Robin's daily driver for years. Robin's x stayed in the house and continued to pretty much drive the land cruiser. I never saw any of the other cars again after he moved out and Robin 9/10 drove the blue G500. He liked to drive himself and would take his bikes up to Fairfax or San Geronimo valley. When we moved out there we would continue to see each other for about 8 years quite regular as he would come out to ride in the Valley and one of the favorite trails went thru our yard. One time I found him alone with my Unimog just staring at it. I also found Carlos Santana alone with my unimog and Phil Lesh too, all on different occasions. I guess it had a pretty magnetic persona mechanica.

That blue truck has not come back on the market. I was told his son has it for keeps but not sure. There are also some defenders and other land cruisers in that collection but who knows at this point he had serious money woes towards the end and they may have been sold off like properties, etc.

When we first met up with Robin we were living in the same neighborhood. He would always be in a NAS 110 but would wave and goggle at my wife driving our 280GE. We would all go back and forth to Kelly's cove area, Baker's beach, and China Beach which is right below his old house so our rendezvous were actually fairly regular occurrences. We had let him know I guess sometime around 1998 that we got the truck from Europa.

On a side note, interestingly, Robin was actually pretty peeved when he found out that MBUSA was bringing in the G500 for $72,000. He had just bought at least these two from Europa for about twice that amount. He tried to sell off one with Walter Dawidiak at $70k but it just sat in the old showroom on Franklin for months and they gave up taking a huge loss of more than half the value. Nobody would buy this "exclusive G" for half price! At that time there was no "early 463s are better" notions.

Recall that the last batch of Europa G500s were held like at the docks against Europa and not allowed to be shipped. They waited and waited at the port in Europe, sitting there, until a settlement in the litigation was reached. It was a tactic to exert maximum pain on Holland by Mercedes when he litigated against them. So the buyers of those trucks got them really late....some are registered as 2001! but paid almost double the going rate...so late, that the new MBUSA trucks were just about at the dealers.
Legal fights ensued.

My wife and I were pretty upset with some of our dealings with Europa at the time and so we all compared notes on these issues a bit.

In the end Europa was put to bed when David accepted a settlement because MB was afraid of PR issues. They likely could have gotten away with giving him nada. Russ continued onward with improved integrity vs the old business where he could not call the shots. Europa at the time being merged with a SAAB Lincoln dealer, if that was not a death knoll I don't know what is!!

[offroad-world]

hi mike .

thank you for that update and that memories about the good times . in my eyes a europe G500 has still double value than a newer G500

mfg. guido .

[Ericsworld]

Very cool history and that is awesome you met Robin in the area! He also has great tastes in vehicles, especially of the off road variety, apparently.

I was told that this particular G was bought by Robin’s wife (Marsha) at the time for his 50th birthday. All of the papers and original Europa documents say Marsha on them. It was driven about 50k miles and then passed on to the family friend in 2010, who then just listed it for sale.

[Gelande]

Yes Marsha Garces, his 2nd wife. They split up that year, 2010. He thereafter retained the blue car.