Miss Jellinek's motorcar; Museum of Transportation celebrates Mercedes centennial.(Brief Article)

What city do you choose for the American celebration of the centenary of the naming of a German car after the daughter of an Austrian-born French dealer? Can you say Boston? It's not certain that Emil Jellinek ever went to Massachusetts, but he'd probably approve of the display of cars honoring his favorite child.

DaimlerChrysler brought together a number of notable Mercedes and some renowned drivers for a retrospective event at Monte Carlo (June 4), and the firm has had a year's worth of activities in Europe. Celebrations for the new world were left to Mercedes-Benz USA, which organized historic displays for a number of major car events: Amelia Island (Escape Roads, April 23), Concours d'Elegance of the Eastern United States (Escape Roads, Aug. 20), Meadow Brook and Pebble Beach (Sept. 3). For an ongoing exhibit, however, Mercedes chose the Museum of Transportation in Brookline, Massachusetts.

``100 Years of Mercedes'' opened in May and runs through February 2002 at the Museum of Transportation's Anderson carriage house. The display area is intimate, with room for just six cars, so a rotating exhibit is planned, with additional cars succeeding the openers over the months. On view at the start were a 1911 Mercedes 37/90 speedster, top-of-the-line in its day, a huge 9.5-liter four with three valves per cylinder. Once in the James Melton collection, it now belongs to a central Massachusetts collector. Other cars were more typical of later Daimler-Benz: a 1956 300SL gullwing coupe, 1971 280SE 3.5 convertible and a 1971 600 stretch limo reportedly built for Mao ...