Junkyard Find: 1978 Mercedes-Benz 300D

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

After finding a couple of Mercedes-Benz W123 coupes for this series, I decided to shoot the next four-door version of this legendary machine that I spotted. Here’s one in solid, stolid brown.

It’s pretty tough to beat the diesel W123 for sturdy construction and utter lack of corner-cutting in the build-quality department. These cars cost plenty, and their owners (usually) got their money’s worth. The price tag for a new 300D in 1978 was $20,911. That’s close to 75 grand in 2013 bucks, for a slow car that was reasonably luxurious but utterly bling-free.

This one made it to just 216,623 miles during its 35 years on the planet. Not bad, but a bit low for one of these cars.

Once it got a little battered and its interior was no longer so nice, this car’s days were numbered. Most likely, something broke that would cost more than a couple hundred bucks to fix, and the owner just gave up on the car.

Here it is, the legendary OM617 five-cylinder diesel. Not a lot of power, but ready for Armageddon!

Some junkyard shopper thought about getting the grille, but then left it behind.







Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Benzaholic Benzaholic on Apr 12, 2013

    Note the single, double, and triple square dots in the speedometer. Simple but effective engineering solution showing maximum shiftpoints. These cars were full of thoughtful engineering touches like that.

  • PSAutomobilist PSAutomobilist on Apr 12, 2013

    This makes me sad, partially because my one previous owner (he ordered it new) 1983 240D just turned 217,000 this week and still glistens like new. They all leave the factory the same. I love diesel 123s- this is my fifth. It wakes up every morning with a cheerful chortle and teaches me to appreciate every tenth of a horsepower. And it's fun to play crazed Parisian cabbie.

    • Cfclark Cfclark on Apr 12, 2013

      All this talk makes me want one again. I could use it to go to IKEA and buy some nice sofa cushions, which I would need after my wife, who was not in love with my first W123, banished me to the sofa for a month. ;)

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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