Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
A Japanese "Mercedes"
By James Grahame
This one seems really strange: Japanese company Duesen Bayern will take a perfectly respectable BMW Z3 roadster and mod it to look like a vintage Mercedes Benz 190 SL. They only select donor cars with under 30,000 km on the odometer and no accident history.
This is a limited production of 100 vehicles, so they're using fiber reinforced plastic rather than steel for the body, although "to pursue genuine favoritism," the bumpers are chrome-plated steel. The Dusen Bayern Mystar is certainly an attractive car, but at the end of the day it's merely a modified BMW roadster. And an original Z3 isn't a bad little car to own, after all.
The original 190 SL was envisioned as the little brother to the Mercedes 300 SL. It proved quite popular, selling over 25,000 units during its 8 year production run (1955-1963). Power came from an inline 4-cylinder engine that put out a respectable 105 HP. A removable hardtop Coupe was available, along with a softtop Roadster. Mercedes was even willing to apply custom paint colors. Alas, the 190 SL was not considered a collectible car, in part because many regarded it as the inferior little brother of the 300 SL. As a result, many of these vehicles were neglected and have only become popular among collectors in recent years.
