Hello,

I am looking for a 82-85 300D or 300TD and or an early 300E or 300TE as a driver. I am looking for a well kept $5000 car and all of the cars I look at locally are junk. I figured I would try the enthusiasts site to find a nice one.

Don Stevens
Clearwater, FL

 

Howdy Don,

In case you don't get the response you'd hoped for .... Auto Trader has always worked for me!

www.autotrader.com/

Welcome to the Board, by the way

 

Thanks for the welcome.

I am already surfing the trader as I have been succesful there in the past too. I am looking for that sweet enthusiast owned car and/or old person car that only Mercedes owners know about. In my experience, nice cars are rarely advertised, often traded in, and typically sold through personal contacts and/or wholesalers who know these cars. I figured your readers would know where they are. I am also looking at Bimmers and I may have found a decent one.

To anyone else who may be observing, I talked to a guy in Tampa who has a decent sounding 200K mile 82 300D, silver over blue F/S for $4995 obo.

Thanks again,

Don

PS: Yours is a nice car. I want an E55, someday.

 

It seems to me that anyone smart enough to buy a W124 and smart/good enough to take care of it is also likely to be smart enough to want more than $5000 for it.

I did see a W124 4-Matic on eBay recently. Cheap, too. But it needed a transfer case and I doubt that they give that away.

As for the W123, it seems to be getting harder and harder to find really sharp ones. I has been a while now (years) but I did pick up an imaculate dealer maintained '82 300D turbo with only 52,000 on it. Problems? It was Manila Beige and my wife made me sell it ASAP. The weird thing was that it was noticably slower and noiser than the '81 TD I had with 190,000 miles on it.

 

that it's going to be tough to find the caliber 124 you want for around $5k. I've been in that marketplace for nearly 10 years now, and it's difficult to find a 124 that's even worth giving the effort to in that range. And the 86/7 cars are more problematic that the later ones. You could pay top of the market prices for a 123 and come out OK, but fixing some of the early (and continied later) problems on a cheap 124 probably won't make economic sense. Email me if I can help, allen.