I have three W123′s; all five cylinder diesels. Very durable, comfortable, safe (I was hit once in one), easy and inexpensive to repair. Parts are very available. Many Mercedes owners consider the W123 as the peak of Mercedes engineering and built quality. They are not flashy, but very, very dependable.

I drive a w124, it’s a 92, diesel of course…before buying one, you must reserve yourself to doing all the work, shops charge a fortune, “nobody gets outta here without paying mercedes prices” I have 208,000 on mine, it should go another 100,000 with a bit of TLC. I dont’ take your guys’ view that you look like an old teacher in one, they make so much money nowadays that they drive new cars..eccentric people drive them ,IMHO

My wife owned an ’81 240D for about 175K miles. Probably closer to 200K, as the odometer stopped working, thought the speedometer continued to, for a few years before selling it, and it stopped aroun 150K, or so. It’d work intermittantly, so you’d be surprised to suddenly see it read 500 more miles than last time you noticed it, three months ago.

This car was horribly slow, but it never ceased to move. Even putting 1500+ lbs. of jetskis on the back didn’t slow it down…at least not enough to notice. Torque is your friend, though more of it would have been better.

I’d wager that car is still moving on Dallas county streets.

Oh, and a couple of years after she bought it, she hit a hearse parked in a no parking zone, driving into the sun one late-afternoon. It was put back right, though no metal forward of the doors survived. She was mad, but unhurt.

Legendary tanks. I’d argue that these are more often driven by the children of liberal-arts-college professors, who have no doubt metriculated to more prestigious liberal arts colleges than their parent(s) teach(es) at.

I witnessed (and worked on) quite a few of these in Iowa City, IA. Perfect car for a teenager—slow as dirt and safer than an armored car.

Just remember to shut it off by turning the key in the driver’s door.

Impalamino, I am a CNC machinist, my dad was a high school dropout who started the machine shop I now run..the benz is a fine collection of machined parts..I do not think liberal-arts types even KNOW what that means! But, you are spot-on about the teenage driver choice,
I never thought of that! Problem is, for me, ( I have 3 kids) is that I don’t want to have to fix the thing after they screw it up!

Watch out for window motors (in cars with power windows), rust in the bottom of the fenders, and the drive-shaft flex discs.
Though parts will be more expensive, it is none-the-less a very good car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W123

I started looking around for these, and found that the prices were typically way above the “beater” margin, even with over 200,000 miles and a busted tachometer. Partially, I guessed that this car has pierced the veil and crossed into “classic” status, but then I discovered the real reason: hippies. These things are the perfect candidates for vegetable oil conversion, and clueless hippies will pay a ridiculous amount to make their car run on cooking products.

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Jose is correct, the old burnouts have driven up the price..come to think of it, they have ruined every good thing, no?

Here we go. . . . The W123 / 300D turbo-diesel Mercedes Benz car of the 1982-85 period are the top of the heap. This is my all time favorite automobile aside from probably the 1941 Packard series 160 Formal Sedan. Since my cheap to buy Packard days are long past . . . the clunker 5-banger cast iron diesel Mercedes will have to suffice.

Got into theses Mercedes diesel W123 and W126 cars about three years ago. We currently own two, a 1981 300SD and a 1985 300D sedan. Wish I’d known about these cars long ago. It has been a fun learning experience. So much so, that I have thought about writing a buyer’s guide for these particular automobiles.

First off . . . in my humble opinion, the 5-cylinder turbo-diesel with the W123/ 300D sedan, wagon or coupe being the best Mercedes Benz cars ever built.

Just sold a four cylinder 1978 240D standard shift sedan last week. Thing had hand crank windows and a manual sunroof. Had over 200K on the odometer and I got more than double what a paid for thing this past spring. The stick shifter 240D Mercedes cars are now sought after by an emerging fanatical sub-cult known to some as the “zero to sixty in seven minutes crowd”. They love the funky snail-like driving qualities of the 240D with it’s OM616 4-cylinder diesel engine. Once on the open road on flat ground, the 240D clicks right along.

With these old Mercedes cars there are some common characteristic quirks caused by over engineering and age. Germans seem to love natural rubber and WW2 syle erzatz plastics to fabricate all sorts of stuff. This includes rubber hose vacuum lines and window grommets. Then there’s plastic throughout the cars especially the big S-Class Mercedes such as my 1981 300SD. Most of that luxury stuff as seen in the vintage Mercedes sales brochure has long ago dried up and crumbled away. Then the sedans tend to leak like a screen door in a submarine with the spare tire in the trunk floating within a foot or so of rain water. The plastic mounting channel that holds the window pane shrinks causing the glass to slip off and fall inside the door. The factory radio made by Becker is an absolute piece of garbage and if still in the car should be at once tossed out the window and replaced. Then we have the driver’s seat with springs that are weak and pathetic. Every W126 and W126 owned and encountered having a sagging to the left driver’s seat. Kits are made to repair this maledy.

Now . . . we get to the good part. These cars ride and handle nicely. Rolling down the highway at 70 mph in the big gold 28-year old 300SD, the car is still comfortable and confident. I’m happy because it is still a low mileage diesel (120K on the odometer) rust free Florida car. Bought the car in New Jersey out of lady’s driveway for $700. Spent another $1,500 to have the car serviced with tranny filters and a tie rod end etc. Popped some new Made in Taiwan radial tires on the thing and that was it. Buy the OEM filters on eBay, three for $35 and do my oil changes. Have the valves adjusted every few thousand miles and that’s it. Have put about 9,000 miles on the 300SD and really enjoy it very much. One time the alternator quit 350 miles from home. The battery was dead and electrics at all. Didn’t shut off the Mercedes diesel and let her run all day. Had it been a gasoline powered car, it would have broken down. That ancient diesel got me home just fine. Bought a certified rebuild Boesch Mercedes Benz Alternator for $75 off of eBay a popped it in. The 850 amp correct size 1-49 battery can be bought at any Walmart for about $70. Same exact battery as sold by Mercedes for around $300 but in a different case. The W126 with it’s superficial age quirks is a wonderful and easy car to work on and a super reliable and safe to drive friend.

Now on to the W123 series Mercedes, namely the 240D and 300D cars. These automobiles have developed a true cult like following. The veggie car craze thankfully seems to have died off. How stupid was that? Spend several hundred dollars to enable a motor vehicle to run on renderings from the fast food fry pit. Then after hammering out a deal at the back door of some Chinese restaurant, the chicken fat grease is taken home to the cellar where it is refined into some sort disgusting fuel source.

There are still Mercedes diesels to be found for sale with botched or half done veggie conversions. Stay clear of those cars as some hippie kid goofball has ruined the thing. Tell the seller to junk the thing so we can have more spare parts.

Though the same drive trains are shared, the W123 series are better at this point than the W126 cars. The 300D was the working class family car and has much less luxury crap to get old and fall apart. For example, I was driving the W126 / 300SD one afternoon when something fell off in the back seat. The plastic ceiling assembly holding the rear courtesy light simply dropped down. Learned later that the internal plastic clips holding the thing on simply dried out and crumbled into dust. Took a drill and screwed in some screws. Good old fashion American know-how solved another kraut caused dilemma.

This is important . . . When looking at any W123 Mercedes, always closely inspect the following . .

1.) All the floor panels. There is left and right main pan that runs from the floor board up front to the seat sill in the rear. Lift both front and rear carpets on both sides. Though the floor might by observation look okay, still physically press your hand or fist down upon the floor to insure that it is not soft and rotted out.

If you’re looking at an otherwise low mileage, decent car with good outside metal the spongy or soft floor doesn’t have to be deal killer. Instead, the condition can be used as a fat bargaining chip to knock the purchase price much lower. Complete factory duplicate steel floor pans are available for about $100.00 per side. Also check under the doors for rust and rot.

Understand that most W123 Mercedes Benz cars do not rust and rot from outside elements. These automobiles rot and rust from the inside out.

A big defect with these W123 cars is the positioning of the climate control air intake louvers on the right and left top cowl just before the windshield. Rain water goes directly into the louvers. There are drains down below where the water is suppose to run out. Instead, over time, debris and materials work down into the lower region and clogs those drains. Water then floods into the area, rises and overflows down through the air dusts which then run out mainly to the rear floor. The wet condition and soaked carpeting is usually not noticed until it’s too late and the floor rots from the inside out. Same problem with the doors as the rain drains get clogged and water builds up inside the doors rotting them from the inside out.

Just acquired a very fine Antracite Metalic Grey 1985 Mercedes 300D Turbo with 111K on the odometer. Have all the service records, booklets, history and even the dealer showroom sticker showing the list price to be $31,867. Paid $1200,00 for the car in August 2009. There are couple of small spots of superficial rust but nothing that a Saturday afternoon’s work can’t cure. The car is in excellent condition having been garaged all of it’s life. Everything works except for the orig Becker radio which is crap from the start anyway. That 300D is safely tucked away in our garage and will put on the road probably next spring.

Have owned three 1980s vintage 300D turbo diesels. The W123 series Mercedes Benz cars are quick and nimble and handle with the ride and feel of a much larger automobile. All in all, the Mercedes diesels from the 1976 to 1985 period are great old automobiles.

CaptQuahog,

Please let me know where you look to find such reasonably priced w123 cars ? I was looking on autotrader and all the cars in decent condition are selling between $5,000 and $6,000. Where do you buy parts for these cars ? Are they readily available ?

Thanks!

CaptQuahog,Please let me know where you look to find such reasonably priced w123 cars ? I was looking on autotrader and all the cars in decent condition are selling between $5,000 and $6,000. Where do you buy parts for these cars ? Are they readily available ?

Thanks!

This car is worthy of a better review. So I’ll give it one.

I’m the owner of an 82 240D 4speed. I bought the car for the meager sum of 700 bucks – a mere fifty more than the ’650, runs great’ meme of my family, as we’re essentially all beater drivers. The more rich people your area has – I live near LA – the more of these will be in your local market. Some rural places will have next to none, and in some areas I can see no reason to pay more than 2k for one, since the market below that amount is plentiful.

The W123 is a pleasure to work on. Join a forum, get a factory service manual (I haven’t yet, but I’m a cheap ass), if you know the procedure it’s all fairly straightforward.

I worked for a guy who was trained as a factory tech on these cars when they were new – he said that Mercedes designed these to be permanent cars – you buy one new, and you’ll pass it on to your children’s children, as long as you maintain it and it doesn’t get destroyed in a wreck.

Hard to do – the comparable Volvo 240DL is hundreds of pounds lighter, and has a similar reputation, and equipment level – the W123 just seems to have more metal everywhere. The chassis seem to be evergreen – cars have gone well past the million mile mark by more than twice.

These are available in lots of flavors, and if you like to drive I suggest a 240D, believe it or not. The 300D turbo just doesn’t have the same tossable, nimble feel, and the shorter gears and manual four speed give you all you really need. I routinely blow past people with multiples of my horsepower and torque, yet they’re practically roadblocks in my way, and it’s not power to weight, either – 72 hp, 3300lbs. It’s something beyond just numbers, and the suspension is simply the best design of the era. Rally car travel and the possibility of ‘four door Vette’ handling, if not acceleration.

Some have paired the 3.0l 5 cylinder turbodiesel with the 240D’s manual four speed and supposedly this is the best of both worlds – I say that the 240D is a Zen automobile and that once you can learn to live with never beating anyone in a drag race again unless you just catch them sleeping, you find that the power is perfectly adequate, the motor simply rolls on forever as long as the oil is changed and the valves adjusted about once a year, and then you get into swapping out wheels and cutting springs like I have. The possibilities are fairly endless, everything from fuel sipping sedans to torquey wagons and AMG clone V8 coupes (and the occasional bastard American V8 shoehorned in), and it seems like the platform is only limited by the imagination and pocketbook.

Not many cars can give you that old school car experience with such a solid platform, bulletproof reliability, high efficiency, safety, and little things like monoblock brakes and IRS, even the ability to adjust the slop out of the gearbox in about three minutes.

They say they don’t build them like they used to, and in this case it’s true – there’s not another car like this anywhere, and for some reason they’re still cheap as hell. Eh, who cares, I’m hip, the rest of the world can overpay for old Monte Carlos for all I care.

Great, great cars. Gotta love ‘em. CID, great writeup!

From a strict utilitarian perspective, there simply is no better car than this, by any manufacturer, including Mercedes, at any price. Cars have only gone downhill since, as I was reminded when the oil level light started blinking last night driving home in my wife’s 2008 BMW 528i. I would have checked the oil, only the thing has no dipstick. That’s right – no dipstick. Except the rafts of overpaid engineers at the overbloated company that designed the thing.

Frankly, you couldn’t pay me to drive a newer Mercedes, and lots of people with new Mercedes cars buttonhole me outside the bagel shop to tell me how they had a car just like mine and would still be driving it if they hadn’t been rear ended by a loaded dump truck on the freeway and totalled the car, but walked away. “Car saved my life. Don’t ever sell it – these new ones aren’t half as good”.

Rust is the enemy. Your jack points will rust out, and the fender rims. So spend your money replacing rubber items and get some new sheet metal. Respray it if you get bored. And drive to work with the quiet confidence that 95% of all the other cars on the road will still be in the boneyard long before yours will.

The drivers’ seat is clearly from another era, and you will likely have to re-stuff it if you have a bad back. But the MB tex is pretty bombproof.

You will need a reasonable mechanic to fix the vacuum system and adjust the valves periodically. You may need some new rod ends and periodic other suspension components, but once you replace them, they are good for another 20 years. So look at maintenance as an investment in secure transporation.

If you live in LA, take it to Mr. MB Motors in Encino, just off the 101 (no affiliation). Taking it anywhere else is a huge waste of money. If you live in or around DC, take it to the Auto Shoppe, in Silver Spring MD. Tell Randy that Karl sent you.

I think you can the W124 model to the list also.

Whilst in Europe, I picked up a Merc W124 wagon model, 1993, 5 cylinder 2.5L diesel, with 170,000 miles. A little bit of rust, a worn driver’s seat, a rear window washer out of commission, was all that was wrong with it.

Even in sub-freezing temperatures, with not having been turnovered over in days, it still started right up at the first turn of the key (with a warm up of the glow plugs).

Yes it was slow, but the acceleration was steady and she could still get up above 105mph on the autobahn.

Smooth ride and good handling.

Some examples with the same engine, have been clocked in at over 500k miles, and there is W124 former taxi in the Mercedes mueseum in Germany with 1 million miles.

I’d bring her back to the states with me, but the cost of repatriation is prohibitive.

They don’t make them like that anymore.

It is definately on my beater best of list.