I had wanted to buy this book for a while, as the author, Bernd S. Koehling had written some interesting blog articles on his website, so I figured I would try a couple of his books too (I also purchased Volume 2 which will be the subject of a later review). Added to that, he obviously has great taste in cars, and I would like to try and support an author doing new works on these fine vehicles.
I have to admit, I am a bit of a sucker for books that cover the W111 coupe and Cabriolet, so with the articles, and the section on these models, I purchased both books on Amazon.com.
In summary, the book is accurate and well written, but let down by poor printing and publishing.
On the plus side, the books is easy to read and a nice mixture of background, personal stories and the like. I thought the section on the Mercedes-Benz 300SE as compared with the Jaguar Mk10 was especially good. The book is covering many models, and at a time where some would argue that Mercedes-Benz was at its zenith, so each section is not detailed, but there are new pieces of information I have not seen before, and a nice selection of photos.
That leads me to the downside. The photos are well selected, but unfortunately printed at low resolution. It feels like the whole book has been printed on the laser printer that you can see at any office. It’s such a shame, as the photos would really add so much to this book if they were printed properly.
Given the book is quite expensive (around $43 USD), I would expect better. I can only assume that the author self published, but I think after spending all that time assembling a great set of photos, he should have made sure they were printed properly. That leaves me in two minds on this book. It is a good read, covers the models well, has a nice technical appendix, but such a shame about the photos.
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