My uncle brings home the CC bacon once again! Being a university town, there are a number of interesting vehicles cruising about. He found this 300TD parked in downtown Iowa City during the Farmers’ Market. I’m sure Laurence Jones will find this wagon version of his car most interesting.
I believe these were the very first factory-built wagons Mercedes made, all earlier versions were coachbuilt. This one looks pretty nice in navy blue. The only question is, does it run on diesel or cooking oil? Either way, it should be making the rounds for years to come.
Looks like Eugene. And probably explains how I ended up in Eugene; University towns have a habit of getting under one’s skin.
These were expensive in their day: $34k in 1983. That’s $74k inflation adjusted! How did all those Californians afford that back then? And interest rates on car loans then? Well above 10%; easily 12 -14%.
Well, at least they got a car built to last for their money.
Eventually I’ll get to my ode to the W123s since I’ve fallen for the trap twice. It’ll be fun comparing the plusses and minuses between Millicent (The beater 300D Turbo for $500) and Lorraine (The garage queen 280E I currently drive). If engines determine car personality foremost, there’s no bigger character gap in the top powerplants in these cars.
I’ve always flirted with getting the Wagon, but they always command a price premium, especially in these parts as the ultimate alternative family hauler. Plus their self leveling rear suspension is too dear a replacement probability for my current budget.
I would love to read that comparison. No pressure…
i used to have a 240d w/ 4 spd. manual. i loved that car. my mechanic was working on restoring a beater 300td that he had pulled out of the weeds somewhere. he told me that it was relatively easy to replace the air suspension on these with the conventional rear suspension from a sedan. poor guy died before he got very far on the project.
the laurence version…
LOL I feel like that’s the 2nd call out today. Fair enough. I even have a facebook page for my current W123. Sad I know.
I’ve always loved the W123 wagon–I tend to see well-maintained examples of these with Andover and Harvard stickers in the rear window–an old-money, New-England preppy car. I’d love to find one (since the Peugeots are so rare), but they are expensive to keep up.
For the record, I had an ’81 300D, non-turbo, for a while.
Well,
i’ll chime in as well.
I’ve always loved these — all the well heeled families had one of these. Back in the early to mid 80s they were very popular w/ the LL Bean, Lands End, white turtleneck under the sweater crowd.
I even found myself on ebay a few weeks back looking at the availability of one of these…… it would make a wonderful laid back, cool daddy car.
A friend of my sister owns an ’83 300SD. She bought it on E-Bay several years ago for under $2000 (Canadian), and it had around 200k on the clock. She went down to the States with her husband to bring it back, and all it needed was a new set of glow plugs. They trailered it back, replaced the glow plugs, and now she uses it as a summer car. She calls it her Tiger Tank.
It looks like that TD is a transplant to Iowa. The stickers on the windshield look like a Virginia inspection sticker (yellow) and a city sticker to the left of it. Given the fading of the yellow, though, I’d venture it’s long left Virginia.
As I type this, there’s an ’85 300D for sale at an upscale mom-and-pop dealership in Orange County, California. They’re only asking $2950. It’s charcoal gray with a dark tan interior. It’s got 260,000 miles on it.
The only thing stopping me from pulling the trigger is my numerous classic car projects and an upcoming $700 copay for a wisdom tooth removal.
Don’t do it. These cars are serious money pits. Well, if you get a manual transmission one (the automatics tend to shift roughly), the car will run and drive forever — however, it it will ride like a buckboard because the air suspension will be toast, the cruise control won’t cruise, the climate control will be channeling global warming, and to make that worse the windows might be stuck, and to put all that right you are looking at twice your original price of admission, at least.
The “climate control channeling global warming” might be the thing I remember most vividly from my own W123. That, and the plethora of vacuum hoses that ran things like the door locks. If there were a shop somewhere restoring these and modernizing them (not just converting them to veggie diesel), I’d buy one in a heartbeat, given that the W123 may be my all-time favorite sedan, but I don’t think I’ll be taking on ownership again otherwise (although, there is the little old lady around the corner who has one…maybe she’ll want to sell it sometime soon? Hmm…).
If it’s a 300D sedan, it won’t have the air suspension issues of the TD (wagon), but all the other warnings apply. If you want to go simple, go 240D!
my 240d was actually a money pit as you pointed out. it was a constant stream of $500 repairs. but in fairness the car was built in ’83. i think that if i didn’t live in the city and i had some place to wrench it myself, it wouldn’t have been so bad. it’s superbly engineered with most parts reasonably accessible and not as expensive as you would think. i gave it up after an ongoing transmission (manual) issue that my mechanic couldn’t get a handle on. once i got the climate control fixed – some idiot had put the wrong kind of refrigerant in – it worked great. also, the ergonomics were the best of any car i’ve driven.
I’ve had hit and miss repair experiences, and in my experience someone who knows these well enough to do the repair right the first time saves you money and headaches. They aren’t complex (beyond the vacuum lines) but rather intricate.
Plus I am lucky that the one I current have only had 105K miles on it and a stack of records over 30 years when I bought it, so I knew what rubber bits were about to go. I think the most I’ve spent was $500 on a water pump repair, but over a year I haven’t hit the amount I initially bought it for yet either. I know eventually that’ll change though. It’s 31 years old and has soo many vacuum hoses, and the automatic transmissions more love than your average turbo hydramatic or torqueflite.
I have to say, the radio position…. very German… “Keep your eyes on the road, not your mind on the song.” But one of the reasons I went back to it after having one is that as a car it fits my body well, it feels my favorite sweater.
Gotta love that!
What’s wrong with the right front door? Seems open(?) to me.
My dream project is to rebuild one of these and convert it to WVO. It would have solar panels on the roof to preheat the WVO and other things. I love these.
These cars will outlast the sun