When I was looking to buy my first car I was super into MR2s and wanted a first gen. I was emailing back and forth with a guy with a MR2 SC project and my friend sent me a craigslist ad for a 1980 Mercedes 300SD. I really loved the look of it and figured I would at least go look at it if he would respond about meeting…

I really like this spread.

Agreed. Values on these are shooting up, so if this was in the shape it is being presented as being in $11-12K sounds about right, maybe a little less depending on the severity of the paint issues.

You are correct, AMG doesn’t offer any manuals. There are “AMG line” vehicles that offer manuals but its just an appearance package/trim level as far as I know (i.e. the A160 AMG line that features a 102hp 4cyl).

I’m a 3rd year at Tech and I’ve never felt unsafe on campus although there are the occasional on-campus Clery acts. I think GTPD does a really good job of keeping the area safe. Other than Knight Park/Howell Station Historic District at the left of the map, the area west of the train tracks is still pretty bad with…

Those Cadillacs were truly horrible. We inherited a 1988 in 2000 that my great-aunt had owned and kept garaged since new. It had 24,000 miles on it when we got it; it had 28,000 miles on it when it died. 24,000 miles and the interior was falling apart. I was little when we had it but my dad said that it was the worst…

The V8s, at least in my experience, will run 300,000+ miles if you take care of them and do some age-related preventative maintenance. However, they do have some issues and are a bit harder to work on. Biggest problem in my mind with them is the mechanical Bosch fuel injection. When it works, its pretty good, but when…

I remember that you could get decent ones in my area for $2-3k a few years ago. I saw one recently and it piqued my interest and went online and saw that decent ones are now $6k+. Not as bad as my uncle pushing me to think about getting a 70s 911 as my first car about 8 years ago when they were ~$8-15k. Heck, his 88…

Here’s my 116 300SD green ghost that I got a couple of weeks ago.

I concur. They are/were great slow car fast cars. It’s all about building and keeping momentum. They really are little mountain goats and they are the greatest car ever produced because of their simplicity and ruggedness. The ideal version of a W123 would be a manual everything 240D sedan with a turbo 617 and manual 5…

Sprinters are great. Our family has a 03 that we bought new for cheap before they were big in the US and it has been an outstanding vehicle. Drives miles better than any other van I’ve driven. One of my favorite driving experiences was driving ours in the mountains to and from my grandparent’s vacation home in…

Your’s may have been a worse-than-average example but you are pretty spot on.

That’s reasonable. Those M103 can and do sound really nice as well.

Any particular reason for a 300SE versus a 500 or 560? One of my attainable but very hard to find dream cars is a 500sel with full hydro suspension.

They aren’t without their flaws but I wouldn’t call them flimsy. They are typical older Mercedes and built like tanks. The chassis is also incredibly stiff, by far the stiffest chassis of any 80s sedan.

It may have been the first thing you checked but have you checked your body grounds? I had a mysterious battery drain in my old Mercedes that I couldn’t figure out then I discovered that the support for the battery tray which was what the body ground connected to had disconnected from the body because it was only spot…

I remember talking to my uncle about Panteras about 5 or so years ago and telling him that he should buy one because the prices were going to crazy. It used to be that you could get pretty nice examples for ~$40K and you’d pay double that now. I really think that the Lotus Esprit and Elise will also become more…

Even still, the issues with old Jags never were the engines, they were typically one of the strong points of the car. It was always the wiring and electrical that gave so many issues and there are a number of good aftermarket replacement wiring harnesses that aren’t super expensive and can make these cars dramatically…

The grille is a homage to the W194 300SL racers of the early 50s:

The idea that AMG is being watered down because they have a model that is not the top of the range is simply ridiculous. There were AMG tuned 240D and 300D back in the day. Of course they did variants of top cars like the 450SEL 6.9 and the 500/560SEC/SEL but they tuned whatever because they needed the money back…