Artful Living; Mercedes Maestro

Artful-LivingMag.com Artful Living

| Summer 2013

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from the publisher || ARTFUL SPACES A gift beyond price for the people you cherish: time and space to share

The Unexpected

M

ost of us flip through the pages of a magazine to be entertained, be amused or come across something of interest. You quickly know it when you see it.

I recently attended a media event called Magazine Day for editors, publishers and advertising agencies.

The headline from the research is that readership of lifestyle magazines is on the rise, with the largest growing segment being Millennials born between 1977 and 1994.

I realize that this is surprising given all of the doom and gloom about print-based media. We all know what has happened to newspapers and newsweeklies. Why are magazines different? A apt analogy might be that news is like bagels and quality magazines are like wine. People want to consume news while it is hot and fresh, while on the other hand time spent with a glossy magazine is best savored like a glass of fine vino.

Welcome to the summer issue of Artful Living, with an emphasis on the male perspective amply represented in the pages that follow. A special thanks to one of our favorite writers, Alyssa Ford. Alyssa is an outstanding journalist and stops at nothing to uncover a great story, especially anything to do with history and interesting characters. In this issue, she penned a number of pieces, including the story of an exclusive and secret enclave of Lake Superior summer cottages called Encampment (page 72). “Members Only” (page 91) gives the skinny on private country clubs, and “A Nip of Minnesota 13” (page 217) is a clever retelling of Alyssa’s trip to a rural Minnesota county once famous for producing world-class hooch during prohibition.

Consider slowing down your pace for summer and taking Artful Living along for an old-school read at the lake or pool.

If you want it digital, we have a strong presence on all of the social-media channels plus an online version of the magazine compatible with mobile devices and tablets. Sign up for our monthly Artful Spark newsletter, and receive a free copy of the magazine by liking us on Facebook.

Thanks for spending time with us. From real estate to country clubs to moonshine, Artful Living continues to deliver the unexpected.

Cheers,

9 5 2 - 4 75 - 12 2 9 www.kslandarch.com

Frank Roffers Publisher Artful Living

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE WITH VISION

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1/28/13 12:10 PM

spotlight || expert

Mercedes Maestro Minnesota is home to one of the world’s premier Mercedes-Benz experts. | BY ALYSSA FORD

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n the rarified world of Mercedes-Benz racing cars, “limited edition” is an extreme understatement. Fewer than 400 great vintage Mercedes are thought to exist. A handful are valued at $25 million or more. Some, like the 1903 Mercedes Simplex, are so prized they have no known value.

So for people who buy, restore or collect Grand Prix–quality Mercedes, it’s nothing to fly to Argentina or Poland for a single gearbox, gas tank or chassis. News of rare auto parts travels by rumor,

and high-level restorers are adept at chasing ghostly leads. In the United States, there are just a handful of shops equipped to restore the rarest of Mercedes racing cars, and one of them is in Stillwater. Lee Gohlike, a 67-year-old Minnesota native, knows more about the engineering of Mercedes-Benz cars than any reasonable person should.

“Lee is unique because he’s a mechanic, but he also knows the history as well,” says Rolf Wagner, a noted Mercedes restorer in Landshut, Germany, and an officer with the Kompressor Mercedes

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spotlight || expert

“Even very fine custom cars were made in factories, on assembly lines. They came with parts books. They’re meant to go very high speeds on racetracks, where they’re going to crash or wear out.” — LEE GOHLIKE

Club. “He’s been restoring rare Mercedes longer than anyone else in the States.”

During his nearly 50-year career, Gohlike has restored some choice autos: a gullwinged Mercedes 300SL Roadster, currently ranked the No. 5 sports car of all time by Sports Car International.

A 1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK once owned by the son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes novelist. The Ferrari GTO that won the Daytona 500 in 1964 and the Type 37 Grand Prix Bugatti that won the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1956. He also penned one of the de-rigeur books for high-level Mercedes collectors, the Illustrated Mercedes-Benz Buyer’s Guide.

Gohlike has restored Fiats, Bugattis, Ferraris and the world’s only complete Bucciali. But Mercedes-Benz is his first and true love, and he remembers clearly the moment he saw his first specimen. “It was 1963 in a gas-station parking lot, and I had no idea what it was,” he says. “I thought maybe it was a French car.”

Gohlike, who grew up repairing tractors on his family’s farm in rural Rice County, was deeply struck by its German engineering. He bought the car, a 1952 coupe with a stretched silhouette, for $200. He was hooked.

By 1970, Gohlike was travelling regularly to Europe for parts.

In 1978, he bought a rare Mercedes in Argentina and smuggled it out of the country during the horrific Dirty War, under a martial-law crackdown. “That was crazy,” he says. “I could’ve been killed so easily.”

He also pioneered a method for sleuthing out valuable Mercedes: researching the original commission orders at Daimler’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and then personally visiting the old-money families that bought the cars when they were brand-new.

“Here I was, banging on the door of these chateaus and villas across Europe,” says Gohlike. “And these aristocratic families were very polite and tolerated me because they thought I didn’t know any better.”

As a result, he was able compile a database of every Mercedes produced between 1927 and 1933 as well as what happened to each.

He’s working on an another database detailing every important Mercedes that has come across the pond.

engine enigma While some collectors balk at the idea, Gohlike has built engines from scratch, forged from the same alloys and made to the exact dimension and design as the original.

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spotlight || expert

Gohlike says it’s been a combination of “internal fanaticism” and unadulterated good luck that’s made him one of the top Mercedes restorers. “My life is like that Bob Dylan song ‘A Simple Twist of Fate,’” he says. “It’s just been one lucky break after another.”

Case in point: Gohlike unknowingly bought a house in Vermont just down the street from George Waterman, a renowned Mercedes collector and historian who gave him a graduate-level education in aristocratic racing cars. Then he befriended a heart surgeon who later decided to sell all his possessions — including one of the most valuable Ferraris of the mid-century. “He sold it to me for a fraction of what it was worth,” remembers Gohlike.

In 1981, he did something that some collectors consider blasphemous: Gohlike built a Mercedes SSK engine from scratch, forged from the same alloys and made to the exact dimension and design as the original.

“Some people saw this as a kind of art forgery,” says Gohlike. Though he might have shocked the old guard, he was onto something. A new generation of collectors decided they didn’t just want to look at their vintage cars behind a velvet rope; they wanted to drive them.

Gohlike says it comes down to a simple question: Is a car a piece of art, like a post-Impressionist painting or an antique chair or a sculpture? In his mind, the answer is very clearly no.

“Even very fine custom cars were made in factories, on assembly lines,” he says. “They came with parts books. They’re meant to go very high speeds on racetracks, where they’re going to crash or wear out.”

A handcrafted reproduction costs roughly 10 percent of the original and allows the owner to participate in vintage racing and rallies, such as the famed California Mille that runs through a thousand miles of scenic Northern California backcountry. The demand for authentic reproductions has reached such a fever pitch that Mercedes-Benz is even in on the action, having recently built 10 vintage SSKs and a 1908 Grand Prix from new but historically accurate materials.

Gohlike doesn’t mind that the mothership is now in the competition; working on Mercedes autos has given him the financial freedom to pursue his various eclectic interests.

He’s starting a malt-whiskey craft distillery in Wisconsin.

He hosts an annual symposium for historians, philosophers and scientists to have free-range discussions at his historic bed-and-breakfast, The Outing Lodge. When he has the time, he loves doing vintage rallies and has been known to run out for a gallon of milk at 130-plus mph on the deserted backroads around Stillwater.

What he doesn’t do is ride with the top down. “I never understood the appeal of convertibles,” Gohlike says.

“What’s the point of driving a really fabulous car if you can’t hear the engine?”

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My Favorite Vintage Rally |

BY LEE GOHLIKE

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of driving in some of the most scenic and inspiring vintage-car rallies. The best one by far is the Rallye International des Alpes through stunning mountain passes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. During the day, you cruise in a fleet of stunning cars — Alfa Romeos, Austin-Healeys, Ferraris and, of course, Mercedes. You stop in quaint alpine villages for cappuccino. At night, there are multi-course dinners in mountain grottoes. When you cross into Austria on the second or third day, the customs officials greet you with a glass of schnapps. I drove a 1925 supercharged Mercedes K model that sounded like a John Deere tractor mixed with a Harley Davidson. It was fantastic.