By Marcal Eilenstein
Today we have a car that I’ve seen quite a few times over the years. This is a 1977-81 Mercedes 300D, which I’m guessing is the 3.0L 5-cylinder diesel (speaking of diesel). It’s a regular at this park & ride where I sometimes catch my bus, and I decided I should finally share the W123 love with you all. I didn’t get a chance to get some shots of the interior, but it’s in decent shape. You can see that the body is in good condition, and everything is there. The wheel covers are a little unfortunate, but that’s easy to fix. I don’t need to tell you what good cars these are, or how dependable they are. I imagine if Iwere to read the odometer, it would be deep into the six digits.
I don’t know much about these cars, so I don’t know if this emblem on the grille means anything.
Over to you. What do you think about this car? Would you enjoy driving it?
Antti Kautonen 
Joel Strickland 
Kamil Kaluski
Should've gotten a close-up of the emblem.
Consider it an external odometer, that gets updated every 250,000 km to 1,000,000 km, and then another update at 1,000,000 mi. The fact that there's one probably means they only applied for the 250,000 km one, but maybe they're only running one emblem.
<img src="http://www.majhost.com/gallery/legomech/HighMileageBadge/p1010012.jpg" width="560" height="420" />
Hopefully this image doesn't have some sort of hotlink protection…
Interesting. Next time I'm there I'll get a better one. I see it several times a month.
The wheelcovers look like an aftermarket version of some Toyota Camry wheelcovers.
I'm thinking Pep Boys clearance section.
Shouldn't there be some sort of punishment for their use?
i think being seen driving any car with those wheelcovers is punishment enough
they might be snow tires or something like that. but plain steelies look better than those plastic hubcaps.
My coworker has an '84. It is very sloooow and losing paint.
These always seem to be filthy. So slow they are perpetually driving through their own cloud of soot. But they are like the terminator. It takes a whole lot to kill one.
I definitely want to try driving one of these, even if I don't think I could do 0-60 in 20 seconds (at least not for a mere 30mpg). But I imagine it has character. I'll have to settle for the MBTex wallet as close enough.
I would enjoy driving the wagon version with the turbo diesel engine. Too bad they're so expensive when they're in decent shape.
A W123 wagon with the engine from a W126 300SD and some engine/suspension tweaks can do pretty sweet things
<img src="http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6528/dsc7140m.jpg" width="600">
My buddies had one of these back in highschool. His dad owns a mini fleet of 80s diesel benzes. That car did 0-60 in "oh shit, I gotta shave again" as I called it, but it got the MPGs and never, ever left us stranded. I loved that car.