In the star-studded village.

“It’s an unwritten rule of our family,” says Mile with a grin. “This isn’t just any old car. It’s a piece of family history. But not one which should be locked away languishing in a garage. We drive it around a lot. It’s just fun.” A close friend of the Topić family and a Mercedes-Benz enthusiast himself, Mirko Perkušić (68) left in 1968 to work in Germany along with many other youngsters his age, he tells. Once there, he worked as a painter and decorator. He was 18 years old at the time. He worked in Karlsruhe and later in Switzerland, and only came back to Imotski three years ago. “Throughout my life, I’ve only ever driven cars from Mercedes-Benz, and have owned 27 of them,” says the repatriate. The first one, which he acquired as a young man living in Germany, was a black 180 D ‘Pontoon’ from 1956. Today, he drives the same model in the same paint finish. “Back to my roots,” he explains. “Already as a young man, I really fell in love with this model series.”