Mercedes-Benz is a great caretaker of its vintage models. It offers an in-house restoration service, and it reproduces parts that help collectors keep their classics on the road without resorting to MacGyver-like engineering. The latest addition to its catalog is a small but significant one: The company is reproducing the parking brake knob fitted to models like the R107 SL and the W116 S-Class built during the 1970s.
In many older Mercedes, you set the parking brake by pushing a pedal with your left foot, and you release it by pulling a knob on the left side of the dashboard. It releases with a satisfying “clunk!” that would set off a five-alarm panic in a modern car. The plastic release button screws onto the linkage and tends to crack as time and varying cabin temperatures take a toll. Without it, releasing the parking brake is a huge hassle.
The Drive learned from a Mercedes-Benz Heritage representative that reproducing even small trim like this requires a great deal of work. It’s a process that takes several months or, for bigger and more complex parts, several years. The brand begins by identifying parts that will soon be no longer available in its inventory or that are already sold out. It then reaches out to the supplier that made the part new—assuming the supplier still exists, which isn’t always the case for decades-old vehicles.
Even if the supplier is still around, it might not want to invest time and money into reproducing a small part that won’t generate a tremendous amount of volume. Mercedes sometimes needs to find a new partner. That’s what happened here: Mercedes-Benz Heritage told The Drive that the original supplier made the final batch of parking brake knobs in 1975 and that the part was unavailable new for several years after the last one was sold. There was enough demand to reproduce it, so the company began looking for a new manufacturer to work with at the end of 2022.
The first batch of reproduction parking brake knobs was ready to ship to collectors about two years later. Who makes the new part hasn’t been revealed, but Mercedes-Benz Heritage assures us that it’s identical to the original in terms of feel, function, and quality. Like every reproduction part, this one was put through numerous real-world tests to ensure it meets the same standards as a spare part for a new or late-model car before getting the green light. I haven’t seen the real thing yet, but I’ve been driving vintage Mercedes-Benz models for close to two decades, so I’ve pulled that piece of trim thousands of times. The new version looks spot-on in pictures.
Assigned part number A1155400028, the parking brake knob joins a range of over 160,000 reproduction parts for vintage Mercs. It’s available worldwide, several thousand units were made, and it’s priced at €50 excluding tax and shipping (about $52 at the current conversion rate).
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