Graham Robson

Athens to the Arctic in a Mercedes.

Does the Mercedes-Benz 190E saloon of 1982 count as a classic car? I'm sure it does today, but in the event I’m going to describe it was brand new. That was the year in which the new ‘small’ Mercedes model was first put on sale in the UK, and when the concessionaires, backing up a journalist’s whim, decided to support a nonstop run from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle to prove – well, nothing much apart from proving that it was a comfortable new machine in which to go anywhere!

Since I had recently organised a harumscarum round-Europe run in the then-new Mini Metro, I inherited the new challenge. Originally we thought that the Tropic of Cancer from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Arctic Circle in Northern Sweden sounded promising, until someone pointed out that there was a civil war raging in Western Sahara. So we thought again, and decided to start from Athens instead.

That looked straightforward enough, with all those traffic-free autobahns in Germany and little traffic at all in northern Sweden. The plan was that Mercedes would deliver the new car (a 122bhp/automatic transmission model) to Athens, we would fly there to start the trip, and arrange for a crew changeover at Hamburg airport to finish the job. Except that when we got to Athens, we were reminded that their customs laws meant that the person who had delivered the car to us (by ferry from Brindisi in Italy) would have to stay with it until we left Greece at the border with Macedonia, which was still Yugoslavia in those days. Three-up in a four-seater car through the Balkans was one thing, but four-up (I was one of them) was another. Fortunately, the lady from Mercedes (thank you again, Marlies) was quite nice about it, especially when we delivered her to Belgrade airport in Serbia just hours into the trip. That left the three of us as originally planned, so Ray Hutton, Peter Cramer and I then settled down to surge towards Austria.

The task was to complete the 3000-mile trip in 72 hours, nonstop except for meal breaks and the crew change at Hamburg airport. That looked challenging enough, but after we had taken the first 23 hours to reach the Austrian border (via the Loibl tunnel near Klagenfurt), we were thoroughly bored by the awful Yugoslavian roads where the supposed autoput (autobahn to you and I) was only a single carriageway road clogged with evil-smelling trucks for hundreds of miles. With nothing to lift the misery except the occasional fuel halt and some awful Iron Curtain catering, we couldn’t wait to reach civilisation again, so the transformation into the well-lit landscape of Austria and the sampling of a delicious Weinerschnitzel evening meal close to that border was most welcome.

The next eleven hours of 190E cruising was pure bliss, for this was overnight, the roads were empty, and here was a car in which we could enjoy using cruise control for the very first time. 90mph cruising at about 30mpg fuel economy was normal, so Salzburg, Munich, Wurzburg, Kassel and Hanover all seemed to pass in a blur. However, after 34 hours the crew had been changed at Hamburg airport and the hard work really began. My dear friend Michael Scarlett took control, lined up the threepointed star northwards, and made for Scandinavia. Once across the waters into the south of Sweden (there was no bridge in those days so in Denmark two tedious ferry trips were involved), the trek north along the coast of the Baltic Sea began.

Sweden, let me emphasise, is long, so the dash via Jonkoping, Stockholm and lots of empty space eventually led to Lulea, where the route turned inland, making for the Arctic Circle about 80 miles from the coast. At 11am, almost exactly 60 hours after the 190E had started from Athens, it reached the proudly-displayed Arctic Circle roadside banner and the job was done.

Only it wasn't quite, for Mike Scarlett – who had competed in the legendary London-Mexico World Cup rally – clearly found this European trip to be just a jaunt. With ten hours left to reach a vital ferry, he set the 190E boldly out towards North Cape, which meant crossing into Finland, moving on into Norway only 68 miles later, and racing to Jaford, where the 20.50 ferry was set to cross towards the rustic highway to North Cape. Only 19 miles later, the road ran out, the leaden seas beckoned all around, and more signs confirmed that the job was done. It was precisely 22.19, and it was still daylight – 71 hours 16 minutes and 3455 miles after the now dirty but totally reliable 190E had left Athens.

So, what to do next? With nowhere else to go, and with no comfortable hotel to check out, the team jumped straight back in from the chilly coastal car park into the air-conditioned comfort of the Mercedes, and set off back to London. Even that was a trek in itself, for after retracing their steps via Stockholm, they made for Gothenburg (a sector which added a further 1500 miles to the whole circuit), took a luxurious 24 hour North Sea ferry back to the UK, and sat down to write the story