Excerpts from the book:

"Don't you have anything larger?" Konrad Adenauer, long time chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany appreciated fast but also big luxurious cars. His favorite mode of transportation was the Mercedes 300d and when he first saw the Mercedes 300 SE in August 1961, he was disappointed by its size. For him the car was too small to be considered a replacement for his 300d. Consequently he kept his last 300d and when he left office in 1963, he bought the car from the German government and used it until his death in 1967.

He wasn't the only one to think this way. For 23,100.- DM (5,775.- US$) people wanted to have something substantially different to a simple Mercedes 190, which cost just 10,600.- DM (2,650.- US$). It was not the car's fault though, the car was a technical masterpiece. And marketing personnel of Mercedes-Benz did its best to promote the new star as a stand-alone product. In order to separate the Mercedes 300 SE from its cheaper brothers, separate brochures were printed and the car was even shown in different showrooms, away from the non-aristocratic rest. Its 3.0 l (183 cu in) M189 engine could be traced back to the 300SL and 300d. In order to make it lighter, it had a light-alloy engine block with pressed-in cylinder liners>>>