PiretBCN wrote: "Carrying his field marshal's baton, Rommel went to Burgdorf's Opel, driven by SS Master Sergeant Heinrich Doose, and was driven out of the village." So Hitler's Chief Adjutant had an Opel and everybody else had a Mercedes???? That doesn't sound very fair. I thought Hitler quite LIKED Burgdorf.
That Opel certainly was a car being made available to Burgdorf for this special bad occasion. Remember that this event happened about 800 kms from Berlin. Burgdorf almost certainly didnt make such a long journey by car. So that Opel was a local car for sure, not Burgdorfs usual transport in Berlin.
PiretBCN wrote:Especially the part about Mercedes being considered a Nazi car. I would have thought maybe Volkswagen.
The Kdf-Wagen, as it was known in Nazi-times, certainly was too small to be a big Nazi´s car. You wouldnt expect a German minister today in a VW Golf, would you? And btw there was no Porsche brand before or during WWII, and BMW wasnt a luxury brand back then. No, most democratic politicians drive a Mercedes today, as did their brown predecessors in the 30s and 40s. And as did the last emperor. Interesting continuity, isnt it? To add, back in the 30s Mercedes wasnt the best-selling luxury brand in Germany. That title was carried by Horch! Nor were Mercedes particularly reliable cars back then as Mercedes Classic experts told me. Especially the expensive, and undoubtedly beautiful Kompressor cars (imho the 540K series produced the most attractive cars in the company´s history) were not known for reliability.
Forgotten in my first post, I have to add that in terms of luxury Maybach ranked above Mercedes and Horch, though most Maybachs werent as elegant as the Mercedes cars or the Horch Convertibles. Like the modern Maybachs the original ones werent particularly known for elegant style. They were big, conservative, impressive, expensive, very rare and a bit dull. And other than its rivals, Maybach only built true luxury cars. To some extent, they were a kind of German Rolls-Royce, only selling less than a mere 10% of what the undisputed top luxury brand of all time did back then. Of cause some Maybachs were used by high-ranked Nazis, though photos are as rare as the cars. I remember one with Himmler and another one with field marshals von Bock and List inside. Field Marshal von Blomberg even seems to have had a private Maybach Zeppelin, which next to the Mercedes 770K the biggest and most expensive car in prewar Germany.
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Ley had the first one. I remember in VW circles, reading in a book where someone restored one that had belonged to Willy Messerschmitt. There is a photo of a line up of the first ones built and they have special registration plates with the name of the high personalities they are going to. 
), with saloon bodywork - nowadays at the Museum for Historical Maybach Vehicles, Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Bavaria, Germany.