Junkyard Find: 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300TD Wagon

The oldest Mercedes-Benz W123 diesels are getting pretty close to 45 years of age, which means that— finally— they’re wearing out and becoming easy to find in the big self-service car graveyards that I frequent. Most of these proto-E-Classes sold in North America were sedans, but the wagons developed something of a cult following and I keep my eyes open for discarded examples.

Here’s an ’81 300TD turbodiesel that seems to have been going strong when it got crashed.

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  • V8fairy Not scared, but I would be reluctant to put my trust in it. The technology is just not quite there yet
  • V8fairy Headlights that switch on/off with the ignition - similar to the requirement that Sweden has- lights must run any time the car is on.Definitely knobs and buttons, touchscreens should only be for navigation and phone mirroring and configuration of non essential items like stereo balance/ fade etc>Bagpipes for following too close.A following distance warning system - I'd be happy to see made mandatory. And bagpipes would be a good choice for this, so hard to put up with!ABS probably should be a mandatory requirementI personally would like to have blind spot monitoring, although should absolutely NOT be mandatory. Is there a blind spot monitoring kit that could be rerofitted to a 1980 Cadillac?
  • IBx1 A manual transmission
  • Bd2 All these inane posts (often referencing Hyundai, Kia) the past week are by "Anal" who has been using my handle, so just ignore them...
  • 3-On-The-Tree I was disappointed that when I bought my 2002 Suzuki GSX1300R that the Europeans put a mandatory speed limiter on it from 197mph down to 186mph for the 2002 year U.S models.