Mercedes-Benz W123: The Ultimate Classic - Carfection

[Music] exactly 40 years ago this year a car was launched that would change everything an executive motor that would set a new gold standard for passenger safety reliability build quality a car for the well healed Discerning driver a car with understated style ladies and gentlemen I give to you the Mercedes-Benz [Music] w123 I'm going to make a very bold statement now but I think this is the perfect classic that you can buy and stick on your driveway today a motorin icon that you can buy and run on a realistic budget prices are only going one way and Savvy carfection viewers might want to put their pension pots into one of these now I think this is the best classic that you can buy for three very good reasons which I'll get to in a minute but before then a little history lesson you see there was a time throughout the 60s and early '70s when it seemed like half the world was ruled by a mly collection of desk pots crackpots and toss Poots usually from the back seat of a big chauffeur driven mercedesbenz scores of top draw Nutters including IDI Armine Robert mugabi papad do dealer all loved their big stretched Merks especially the humongous 600 grosser big Mercedes were the Chariot of choice for dictators like Tito Paul pot chesu Kim yongil and even Saddam owned one several Royal households kept 600 grossers as did the king of rock and roll Mr Elvis Presley even Columbia self-proclaimed king of cocaine Pablo Escobar owned a stretched Merc 600 limo in which he survived more than one assassination attempt thanks to the Big Ben's bombproof build quality it's probably fair to assume that if there' ever been a well attended grosser owner's meet back in the 1970s it would have made spectre HQ look like a Quaker Meeting House so while the 600 grosser was ferrying around world leaders and the uber wealthy the Western world's captains of industry the doctors the barristers the diplomats the chief Executives were looking for something more compact something that still had that whiff of mercedesbenz cache but didn't make them look like a low rent Bond villain turns out the car they were waiting for was this launched in 1976 the new midsized executive Saloon played it safe design wise carrying over styling cues from its bigger brother but the w123 was much much more than a cut price grosser for the masses passenger safety was one of the W1 123's key selling points with a super strong passenger sell side impact bars crumple zones driver's airbag and a collapsible steering column born out of Relentless crash testing at its German facilities a Mercedes obsessive desire to build a world leading automobile of course the W1 23's pioneering use of ABS coupled with double Wishbone suspension and Servo assisted disc brakes were all intended to protect your precious investment and stop you from crashing in the first place despite the high list price this car wasn't instant success in West Germany Eagle buyers had to wait at least 12 months at the local dealers to get their hands on one in fact people were prepared to pay a 5,000 deut marks about 2,000 premium just to get their hands on one by buying a lightly used secondhand one from local Wheeler Dealers in fact German buyers were so desperate to get their hands on one of these that there was stories of of people loitering outside the main gates at the mercedesbenz factories and actually har harassing workers as they came out to see if they would sell them their own cars because workers had been allowed to put in early orders so here are my three main reasons why I think this is the perfect classic so it's safe it has a big boot room for five decent MPG well apart from this one the 2.8 L which admittedly is the one that you'll want but there is a super Frugal diesel that hundreds of cheap skates have run for decades on waste chip fat but most importantly it's Uber reliable so how is this car 40 years on can it keep up with modern traffic well it sort of depends which one you go for the 2 L diesel the 200d only has 54 brake horsepower to haul around this 1.6 tons of grade a German engineering so let's leave that one to one side this is the range topping 280 CE which had 175 and even 185 in some of the later models now that might not sound like a huge amount today but in 1976 well let's put it into perspective the MGB still couldn't make 100 brake horsepower the new Golf GTI had 110 and even the entry level Porsche 911 2.7 L only cuffed up 150 but anyway all of that is irrelevant because today even a mid-range diesel Saloon will smoke a so-called sports car from the ' 7s and ' 80s so what's the point just relax and enjoy your classic I'm not going to talk about anything as vulgar as not to 60 Sprints or nurburging lap times if you want something for straight line speed and you've got no soul go buy a Subaru over the last 116 years Mercedes-Benz have won pretty much everything there is to win in motorport tarer Florio milia the leemon 24 hours and of course Formula 1 on but I bet you didn't know that the Mercedes-Benz w123 also has a rallying pedigree obviously the w123 was never going to become a sprightly lightweight sports car but it was a rugged and dependable Workhorse ideally suited to long-distance endurance rallying where strength and reliability were far more important than outright speed the 28 was duly homologated by the FIA as a fairly Standard Group 2 rally car before it Ian debut in the Epic 1977 London to Sydney Marathon this 30,000 km Ino threaded its way between 30 checkpoints spread across three continents over 30 days and remains to this day the longest car rally in motorport history the following year at the East Africa rally against all the odds the 28 shocked the motor impress by taking first and second places overall with all four crews finishing in the top eight don't get me wrong this car is is a waa it's no Porsche beater but this car has done 135,000 M it's been around the world 5 and a half times and it's not a concour car by any stretch of the imagination I think it was about £7,000 but this car just feels still incredibly well put together it feels really solid it feels very Germanic really it's one of my favorite cars I absolutely love it but there is one more very good reason why I think this is the perfect classic Mercedes-Benz is a blue chip brand that three-pointed star up front is one of the world's most recognizable status symbols and like most designer labels it was reassuringly expensive when this was launched it cost £12,000 without any toys in poverty spec that was about the same price as a three-bedroom semi-detached house if you want celebrity in endorsements well the queen mother had a w123 as did John lenon and Yoko Ono and in fact it's probably no surprise that a w123 also had a starring role in the recent Mad Max film because come the nuclear apocalypse as we all know there will only be two things moving afterwards and that's cockroaches and old Mercedes it doesn't actually feel like it has 175 BHP if I'm completely honest I suppose a lot of that power is sucked away by this rather sluggish three-speed Auto well it's four-speed but the first one is only in low so by the time you get it up to speed it is screaming a little bit shall we say and it's got a straight six it's not nicest sound in straight 6 it's very taery apparently they were like that from new and it's very soft it's got 14in alloy wheels and 70 profile tires so it soaks up everything it soaks up all the lumps and bumps but you wouldn't really want to be taking on the stelvio pass shall we say in one of these at 1010 but this car does everything it's relaxed it's got power it can keep up with modern traffic it turns heads and soon as we pull over everyone's sort of saying well they always know somebody who's had one or they've had one in the past or there's some sort of anecdote that they're desperate to tell is it's a car that makes people smile this thing is an absolute Dole drive you know compared to say an old MGB or even a mini there's no comparison this thing just goes on and on and on it's comfortable you can drive it all day this is a classic that just doesn't sit in the garage Gathering dust it's a car you can actually properly use when you think of Volkswagens you think of the beetle when you think of Fiat you may think of the Fiat 500 when you think of mercedesbenz you think of the w123 it's the most recognizable mercedesbenz silhouette it's the iconic Benz so there you are then three good reasons why you should be scaring the small ads to make the Mercedes-Benz w123 your next classic reliability Motorsport Heritage and an air of sophistication it may well be the only car you'll ever [Music] need so send me a message a life back to you just show me your pressage where the crown we can make it through St the light beond so loud CHS with to B

Channel: Carfection

Views: 659,457

Keywords: mercedes-benz, w123, e-class, e class, saloon, classic cars, motorsport, rally, formula 1, classics, classic racing, Mercedes benz, W123, Mercedes benz w123, Classic cars, XCAR, Carfection, Carfection UK

Id: 6l4au52aY_I

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016