Bubba1

I had an uncle who had a classic silver W116. It was the first time I ever sat in a mb sedan for any extended period of time. I was 15 years old and I fell in love with that car. The wood Center panel, the hood ornament, the gear shifter, the simplicity and elegance of the dashboard dials, the rotary climate control gauge and this is really wierd…the shape of the headrests just stayed with me…etched in my memory for all time.

I knew that one day I would have one…

bishop64

My first encounter with the W116 S-Class was a 1979 metallic silver 280S, which was the basic 'entry' model of the S-Class lineup at the time. It still used the carburetor (vs fuel injection of the SE).
It was an used one but was still in very good condition as one of my uncles, who was working as a salesman for the MB dealership, sourced it. Ours had neither power windows or powered seats but I did not care.
The only thing that we changed immediately after possession was the replacement of the stock wheels (14'' in those days!) with alloy wheels. IMHO, this upgrade instantly elevates the W116 aesthetically into another level.

Stock wheel design:-




Alloy wheel upgrade (not my car, just grab it from the net):-




Everything felt so solid. Like most people, the most impressive thing is that famous MB door closing sound! That ''clunk'' just transmit a well construction of a quality design.
So much satisfaction! (sorry, not fitting so much with the title of this thread).
Right from the beginning, 'luxury' was not the main attraction to me. Hence, having no powered seats did not bother me at all. But. it was MB's structural integrity and safety that got me hooked onto for so many years. (Of course, I welcome 'luxury' coming into the equation as well.)

martinlarose

thanks @bishop64

MBNUT1

This. I remember after in my senior year in college my friend's father in law sold Mercedes, and he let me drive a brand new '79 450SEL down 99 in Central California. I don't think I have ever driven a car since, that had that sense of luxurious presence on the road. The fabulous leather also added to the experience. I guess it would fall under the category of "Most satisfying cars".

bishop64

Since I have posted pics of the W116, I might as well mention 2 features of that car that I still like.

1. A car's bumper is meant to protect the body of the car from minor scratches. Say, you back up carelessly and hit the parking space's guard rail. Or, you parallel park the car but somehow hit the other cars. This should be (or used to be) the main function of the bumper. This line of thinking leads the MB engineers to put those thick black rubber strips along the entire length of the front and rear bumpers.
This is very practical and useful. I did not feel bad when those rubber strips got scratched at all. If they are badly damaged, one can pull them out of the groove and replace them easily and cheaply.
This is classical ''form follows function''. Unfortunately, this feature was removed in the successor W126 in favour of a body coloured matching painted bumper. Aesthetics improvement at the expense of practicality. IMO.

2. The ribbed tail lights. The pics do not show this feature but you can see it in the front turning light. One of the boasting features of the W116 was the horizontal ribbed lights. This design repels dirt (mud, snow, sludge...whatever) better than a smooth surfaced light cover, allowing drivers from behind seeing you more easily. It was a safety feature, in essence. This MB pioneered design carried into the W126 and W140, and disappeared in the W220 when 'aerodynamics' began to gain attention.

PS adding this pic




/fond memory of the W116

SW20S

Personally I just don't run my car into anything

Streamliner

Idiotic government regulations took us from this:



To this:

crabman

Considering what they charge for a teeny ding you'd think the car was surrounded with Faberge eggs.

Streamliner

It’s not you, or me, as we are both perfect drivers, right? It’s the characters who parallel park using the “bump” method and sometimes the bump comes from an all steel plate, step bumper attached to the back of an old pickup, driven by some sixteen year old kid. $6,000.00 later, we find our hero picking up his 223 from the body shop.

SW20S

Thats happened very rarely to me over my life of owning cars, and I’m insured against that with a $50 deductible. I also have PPF on my front bumper which helps with abrasions like that. It’s just not a common enough thing that I would want to trade what is IMO a ugly design for the potential that it might save me a scrape I can have repaired for $50.

My previous LS460L was rear ended at 2 MPH by a lifted Jeep with a big metal bumper and it completely missed the bumper and took out the trunk and did $7,000 worth of damage. Bumper wouldn’t have helped me there.

bishop64

Yeah, US regulations demand the bumpers be beefed up to an almost ridiculous level.
Anyway, why did you import an European model and had to do the conversion to satisfy idiotic government regulations?
I mean, why not just buy from MBUSA? I suppose, this route give less hassle?

Streamliner

I owned a Signal Red 1972 350SL with the small bumpers, as all of them had. I also owned a Signal Red, 1979 450SL with the large bumpers, but I did not use photos of my cars in the post where I compared the bumpers. I never imported a gray market car.

bishop64

Oh! I misunderstood...lol
I thought the 2 pics were your car, before and after conversion to meet the idiotic government regulations...lol

Streamliner

I never would have gone with those hideous wheel well trim pieces.

Wolfman

Looked at some photo albums realizing that I either never took a lot of pics of our cars in the pre-digital days or they stayed in the excess pile of prints in the attic... Found a couple W126 pics from Switzerland, but that's it

SW20S

I took pictures of our cars before the digital era but no idea where they are...

Wolfman

Took some quick pics of the old prints with my phone and they didn't turn out terrible... Our old W126's 500SEL and 560SEL. That was 30 years ago; guess we had the S-Class in our twenties, breaking the model demographic
Loved those cars at the time. Sorry, no W116 pics yet...

Hated those wheel well trim pieces as well but we bought the 500SEL used and taking those off wasn't a good option.

SW20S

Beautiful!

bishop64

lol...I literally have a couple hundreds photo albums in the storage room. And many 'miscellaneous' prints are in dozen shoe boxes.

And, I just spent half an hour to do a brief search and could not find a pic of my very first S-Class W116.

Indeed, we broke their model demographic...lol

And I think I misunderstood you. I thought you still have your restored W116 with you now. If so, you can just hop down to your garage and take a few quick snapshots to show. From you tone, I take it that you restored it and then had sold it back then? I am just curious to see how a restored W116 look like in present days.

Wolfman

That car is long gone. Actually shortly after it was finished. We left it at the company while on business in Europe and an 18 wheeler trying to maneuver crushed it.
All that is left is the hood ornament…

teksurv

Well, those are beautiful cars!

bishop64

How unfortunate! Such a sad story. A restored W116 S-Class should not and certainly does not deserve to end like that.
Well, at least, you might keep the hood ornament as a memorial. I think, putting the Star on a piece of nice wood should make a good desktop decoration or paper weight.

Streamliner

So supremely elegant, a quality that I find is sorely lacking from the current MB cars. Of course, elegance is in short supply throughout the world we currently live in.

Bubba1

Absolutely gorgeous!

bishop64

Sedans, especially flagship, in that era can be summed up by one word, IMHO, ie ''Stately''.

Not just the W126, the BMW E32 Seven and the Jaguar Series 3 XJ also had this stately appearance with them.




Note how small the kidney grille, much much better looking.




I still admire the Jumping Jaguar hood ornament, such a status symbol.