eBay Find of the Week: Rare 1963 W110 Heckfloße Kombiwagen

Here’s your next project! Imagine stuffing an M156 or LS into one of these.

Mercedes-Benz station wagons are so popular that it’s easy to assume they’ve always been a part of the automaker’s portfolio, but that’s not the case. When this week’s eBay find was manufactured, if you wanted a Mercedes “estate” you had to contract it out with a custom coachbuilder. According to the seller, this unrestored, solid survivor may be one of just 15 left worldwide.

Located in Northern California, and in need of quite a bit of work, this rare wagon is nonetheless complete and solid. From the looks of the cars in the other pictures, it is currently owned by an aficionado of the three-pointed star.

Part of what makes this car so rare is the fact that just a year later, in 1964, Mercedes started to offer its own official wagon conversion, contracted out to Montagewerk IMA in Malins, Belgium, but available from any dealer.

ALSO SEE: What Forum Members Are Saying About the Heckfloße

This left the coachbuilders, like Binz & Co. Karosseriefabrik that made this one, to concentrate on commercial vehicles. Even as an official Mercedes, though, fewer than 3,000 fintailed (Heckfloße) wagons were made from 1964-69, and those lack the taller roof that the coachbuilt cars have.

Under the hood is the familiar OM621 4-cylinder diesel. The OM621 made cars like this the darlings of taxi drivers and others who valued durability over speed. According to the seller’s description, it runs and only smokes as much as can be expected from a diesel, so the motor is mechanically ready to go. The manual transmission is said to shift into all gears; however, a fear of aged, neglected brake and clutch hydraulics have kept it from being test driven.

The interior may be as tired as the exterior, but the carpet and upholstery look like they would be perfectly serviceable with just a good detailing. The vinyl dash pad, however, has seen a few too many California summers.

Now here’s the bad part: there are a few rust spots, but nothing that can’t be fixed by a competent body shop. Perhaps the worst thing about this car is the asking price; a cool $20,000, and that doesn’t even include shipping from Auburn, California. You can research other comparable cars to evaluate that price, but the closest I could find was this more common production fintail wagon on Barnfinds. It was a clean example on eBay a few years ago with a “buy it now” price of $42,000. It ended up selling for something between that and $12,000.

You can read a lot more details and see dozens of pictures on the eBay listing: 1963 Mercedes-Benz 190-Series Binz Kombiwagen.