W124 1992 Mercedes 260E Goes for a Drive

you join me today at the wheel of a very nice mercedes an e-class before they were e-classes yesterday i'm driving a w124 and it's rather nice if there was ever going to be a top 10 of the greatest mercedes ever built this battle for the top spot would come down to a fist fight between the w123 potentially the greatest car ever built and this the w124 which came after it which built on the success of the w123 and then took it a bit further into the future so what have we got here today this is a w124 a 260e if you will now you may be thinking this is an e-class not a 260e well it was in 1993 but this is a 1992 car so it's not an e-class yet but the w124 was sold from 1984 to 1997 apart from an america where it sold from 1985 was the 86 model year until 1995. but that's america now in certain parts of the car more on the inside than the outside you can see how it has evolved from the w123 but in other areas it's very much a car of the 80s even though design work started way back in 1976. now those initial concepts back in 76 were done under hans scharenberg just a concept idea of what to replace the w123 with but in 1977 when the project officially started it was taken over by verna brightshirt i don't know why i try and say these names i don't want to do it to myself but the design was officially signed off by 1981 and it was an internal not competition exactly but various proposals were put forward and the one that was selected that you see here was from bruno thacker you know a design god basically following that exterior sign off internal development work and prototyping was finished by 1984 ready to go on the market now looking at the styling of the car is very much a child of the early 80s all the styling cues are very much there for the new decade these wrap around headlights with semi-integrated indicators on the side the wrap around bumpers which are more integrated into the body the air dam which is more prominent these are all things that are very much developing and growing improving the cars well modern integrated look and aerodynamics in fact the two liter diesel with its narrower tyres had the best uh drag coefficient a 0.28 cd which is the lowest in the world at the time and looking down the side of the car look at this on the flanks here we've got lower body moldings in a dark grey color this is possibly the most 1980s executive uh design trope going uh there's so many other cars followed on with this trend and it was a big thing make cars look very kind of cool and classy and hit the rust really well until it was far too late you know it's hard to say whether mercedes influenced the world or the world influenced mercedes but i'm going to go with the former because carry on from the w123 we've got these ribbed tail lights which mercedes said kept the lights cleaner for longer in the dirty driving conditions because the dirt would uh not sit in i don't know one of these faces somewhere and it would be stay it would stay clearer and brighter this is a kind of styling design idea that was copied on a lot of other cars but it really emanated from mercedes as far as i know of course being a mercedes we've got this little tag which pops through the grill when you pull the bonnet release so you don't have to get your hands dirty reaching inside the engine bay how common is that this is an inline six non-turbo normally aspirated petrol engine and there were a lot of engine options on these cars i mean it just goes on and on and on everything from a two liter diesel to a six liter v8 if i listed everyone we'd be here forever so this in the 260 is a 2.3 liter m103 liter engine now there's a lot of different output variations as well on these cars there could either be a 158 or 168 horsepower and either 220 or 230 newton meters of torque giving you an order 60 of either eight and a half or nine seconds there's not really a lot in it but there's so many variations without knowing a bit more detail about the specific car which i haven't been able to find this morning i can't really tell you what i can say though is these had a reputation for bulletproof reliability they were just known to go on and on and on a couple of things to note in around the front of the car first of all headlight wipers ah we love a headlight wiper don't we i need a t-shirt with a headlight wiper on it because that would be my new favorite t-shirt we've got abs abs in 1992 towards end of the run that was fairly a standard item on a luxury executive car like this but early on when this car came out in 1984 uh abs was very much a luxury item my w123 from 83 has got abs but that was an insanely expensive option back at the time when that car was built the batteries in the traditional mercedes position up by the bulkhead i guess for good weight distribution it keeps away from any accident damage we get the vin number over here and there is a really good resource mercedes are so thorough and detailed in their history keeping using a website called mbdata.com i believe we can actually enter this vin number and we can see exactly how this car left the factory should we do that right in fact it's called lafin.com it seems to have changed its name uh the old database website seems to be uh available for sale now if you want it uh the first three numbers you'll find are one two four which tells you the chassis code of the car and beyond that i can tell you this is a 10394 space 2 2 engine with a 722-429-03 transmission which i think is a 5-speed auto audio in the uk grey cloth interior brilliant silver metallic color code 744u approximate build date january 1992. now we've got leather steering wheel additional blinker lamps which i think cyber repeaters yes they are down there right hand vehicles as per ec regulations electric sliding sunroof tilting device automatic transmission four gears a four speed not a five speed that's interesting hairdressers in the rear instrument with miles paintwork preservation folding front arm rest air conditioner and electric window regulators front and rear heat insulating glass all round heated rear window headlamp washers wipers catalytic converter eight hole alloy rims ah 20 liters of fuel that came with the car as standard well that's interesting learn a few bits and pieces already so yeah if you've got a mercedes check out your vin coach says even 30 years later these cars have got a reputation for solidity and build quality it's very hard earned and very well deserved these cars are just absolute rocks of vehicles uh looking around you can see elements of the w123 but the whole thing does look much more modern and uh well part of the late 20th century rather than the mid 20th century really as is kind of in keeping with the mercedes ethos and the time this is more austere luxury rather than out and out opulence as you would find in a more modern e-class so we've got wooden inserts and basic fabric rather than leather and lights everywhere starting with a door card now the door is doesn't feel too heavy it's kind of hinged in such a way that there's only certain points in in its range we think it's going something and then you pull it and it just clunks shut wow what a thump that feels it feels like quality a door card is a combination of hard wearing uh vinyly plastic at the top the same gray cloth as the seats in the middle at the bottom the doors are carpeted like a felty velour which guess is fairly hard wearing because carl's been around for 28 years and it doesn't look particularly worn at all um there aren't many controls or embellishments in the door it's a fairly plain place it's just the the pattern of the fabric and this nice wood same as you find over here in the dashboard i believe it's called a zebrano i think it's a metal backed wood veneer with a bit of varnish on the top it looks nice and actually almost kind of glows with the color very attractive we've just got manual we've got a manual adjuster for the driver's door mirror there is an electric adjuster down here for the passenger door which is sort of sensible but it seems a bit bit cheap skating on a car as expensive as this solid hard wearing metal door pull that's never going to break and down the bottom we've got a fairly narrow but quite deep door pocket which again as i covered with the the felty stuff then moving on to the dashboard this is a absolute fail of a t-shirt it's not too far an area away from you but it's all on a like a minor ski ramp so you can play play lego cars or hot wheels would be brilliant on this actually because you can see we've got the best hot wheels who could make a jump here from the top of the dashboard to the armrest in the middle that would be quite impressive if you could do that i'm going to say some kind of dragster will do that better than a van better aerodynamics on top of it we've also got our front speakers they are in the top corners of the dashboard here same with the w123 and then we've got the instruments which i'm not going to say a direct lift of the one two threes instruments but if they're not they've done very little work they definitely took that tuesday afternoon off after they did the instruments on this one because they are so massively close the oil pressure the temperature fuel in one pod speedo in the middle looks the same and of course the rev counter and clock on the right hand side i would actually be genuinely surprised if these are different instruments in a slightly different fascia and of course below that we've got all our standard warning lights and the bottom of this butts up to like a flat line across the width of the car the four fairly rectangular air vents turn the middle one either side and that's all it's hard dark blue grey plastic vinyl stuff which is then undercut or lined underneath with more of this nice zebrano wood which goes full width of the car just here just a little gap for the steering column and down into the center console looks really really nice and this center console again is borrowed heavily from the 123 the design language i would say rather natural components although these switches and things i'm gonna say again if they took tuesday afternoon off after finishing the instruments early they took wednesday afternoon off after finishing these buttons early then we've got the single column it's not a column shift so i thought that would be two columns but indicators wipers everything is all on this one stalk on the right hand side still got the steering wheel leather wrapped as it said in the vin decoder and the horn let's have a quick horn test maximum road clearing ability this one doesn't have the town and country horn but it's still quite blasty we're like a blasty horn this is a big steering wheel but then dropping down below that into the footwell only two pedals it's an automatic but there is a third pedal why because it's our mercedes foot brake which has got a pull release down there underneath the light switch this is all basically exactly the same layout as you'll find up until certainly w210 i think at 211 as well certainly into the last 10 years or so it's only now they've started doing electric handbrakes this arrangement has disappeared also worth noting this car has got old genuine mercedes floor mats over mats so the carpet is pristine underneath this car has actually got 94 and a half thousand miles on it but it really doesn't look it then moving into the center console lots of zobrano wood and we've got different layers levels almost the top one has got a few minor controls we've got the heated rear window interior light hazard warning lights and the button for the fold down headrest which i haven't quite worked out how you use them i think they pop up when someone sat in the back seat and then you push a button to wind it down again so you can see out the back very clever now the next level down we've got our heating and ventilation and this is notable for a car of this age for two reasons first of all dual zone two windy winder wheels for the driver and the passenger to control their own heating and ventilation temperature which is nice and pretty uncommon in 1993 but also as we just saw from the vin decoder air conditioning wow this was an expensive car so if you're going to find it anywhere it's going to be here but still wow what a luxury to have that is something that puts a lot of people off running a classic or a retro car as a daily the fact you don't get air con and if it's hot in the summer time missing up in the winter time not a problem with this one then moving down from that rather exciting finds to another rather exciting find the original mercedes classic radio cassette uh with a very wide almost full-width lcd screen because this is early 90s so we're into the decade of technology by the time this one came out underneath that tap the the wood veneer and out folds very softly damped the ash tray with lots of chrome embellishment and a feeling of kind of quality on the on the lighter itself which looks like it's never been used which is always a good thing to find in a car see a 12 volt is hiding in there this rolls down into the center console for the automatic gearbox full speed as we've just discovered shift to p when parking the car yeah people just never used to use the handbrake or park brake on autos i don't know if they still do avoid that then we've got four electric windows as we just found out in the vin code and the controller for the left-hand mirror and then finally finally finally in the middle we've got a little carpeted uh augment tray again the same as a w123 that was this car's direct predecessor and they've carried over so many items of that car's design and functionality and of course we do have this armrest in the center big and padded and solid these things confuse people quite a lot because on listen to one two three they lock in the vertical position you have to push the big button nearest to driver the in fact the entire end of it is a button and you can fold it back down again finally finally finally finally we've got the glove box but lockable of course and inside there we have our two cup holders this is our minimal amount of t-shell furry going on here more finally i forgot to mention electric tilt slide sunroof we knew about it from the uh the thing in there that's a full metal panel which slides back and flashing away in front of it in the style of a volvo because i'm sat here without my seat belt on i've got a warning light paint on a commercial airliner red light flashing insert seat belt tab insert seat belt tab seats must be vertical trays must be reclined or whatever you do with trays right okay now we'll look in the back oh sorry one more thing one more thing i just discovered this thing this is actually a bit of genius because you've got your sun visor here your sun are here but you must have had this thing where my sun visors are down but you're driving at just such an angle that the sun is peeping between the top of the windscreen and the uh in the rear-view mirror and it's just dazzling you just want to drive like that not a problem in this car you've got a middle sun visor wow that's genius those guys think of everything well the back of the car is actually surprisingly tight for a car designed at the well it's got two real markets in around the world first of all the executive market the self-driving executive market some of the bmw 5 series and that kind of thing so it's not exp so you wouldn't necessarily have a uh owner being chauffeured in the back of one of these but in germany in particular these were taxi cabs and this is surprisingly tight so i'm a little bit surprised at how tight this is to actually get into in the first place and then sit here with not a lot of knee room oh the seat is quite comfortable as decent headroom kind of sink quite low into the chair nice arm rest in the door kind of very much the same deal as the front doors uh vinyl wood carpet electric window and a big old ash tray on the bottom and felt evaluary map pockets on the back of the seats we do also have a big arm rest are padded nice comfy then in the parcel shelf in the back we've got three things first we've got rear speakers same as in the front they're not in the doors they're up in the in the shelf then in the middle we've got our first aid kit it's still here after all these years never been used which is a good thing and finally we've got this fold up headrests default position is down so you can see at the back of the car but i haven't quite figured out how they work let's go read the handbook [Applause] wow this is a bit of a cavern you could seriously uh dispose of a couple of bodies in there quite happily it goes on all the way back here the seats don't fold down but there's room enough for a couple of big suitcases or black plastic bags that are tied off at the top of the gaffer tape also we've got quite deep kind of side pockets that dip right down there and underneath the carpet in the center oops we do have a large plastic area which hides a full-size spare wheel and the jack it's all in there of course being a practical german car i've got a fire extinguisher on the left we've got a hazard warning triangle up in the boot lid so a bit of warmth on this car guys classic old-school automatic wafting a bit of a bit of acceleration the engine revs build nothing really happens and it kind of drifts forward a little kind of thump into second as you pull away must adjust that left hand mirror curious thing with these cars the left-hand passenger mirror is a totally different size to the right-hand driver's mirror so that's kind of a little small square thing and on the on the left and a narrow oblongy thing on the right very curious this does ride like a comfortable executive car doesn't feel rapid i've drifted up to 40 it's a 50 limit down here it felt kind of like i was going fast really not not fast fast but it felt like i'd acquired speed the ride is very very smooth on this there's no compromise in terms of comfort on this car whatsoever this was one of those cars where they just pushed the boundaries and research development safety design everything was just pushed further forward just to make it a better car than before and so it's got independent front suspension with mcpherson struts at the back it's got the same uh multi-link rear that was used in the w201 or the 190 which has not long been out and gives it a really controlled planted ride as well as plenty of comfort and it was a design they used for a long time in later cars this car is currently for sale at stone cold classics at rotom in kent if you want to check out this car and others they are really quite interesting stuff i've got in stock hit the link in the description below wow my sunglasses now it's actually got nice who knew this is definitely a sunglasses car this is a sunglasses coolness car you can cruise in this thing so yes i was saying uh excellent platform which they put to good use there are lots of different options of ways you can buy this car obviously there's the saloon which we're setting right now there's a two-door coupe there was a big door the t uh which had a few other innovations on it as well for example uh there was the silent closed neighbor friendly boot lid where you pushed it almost all the way down and it sucked itself in the last little centimeter or two so that it would uh close quietly and also more tightly meaning there was uh no wind noise coming into the cabin which is a bit of a bane of some estate vehicle station wagons then from 1989 they brought out the convertible a little bit wobbly but certainly very classy as soft tops go and then it gets interesting because they knew their market and there was a big market for ambulances hearses commercials basically so you could buy it as a rolling chassis just the front front end bodywork and the engine and transmission just this bit really and a bare chassis at the back so you could have that as a regular or long wheelbase and then build your own car on top of it even under full acceleration it's wafty at best it's not a car you can hustle in at all this is very much the economy version if eco i guess you might might say so it washed along it's comfortable it's relaxing in some ways it's kind of like my volvo but uh a slight different take on the same thing a big barge not much power comfy seats and indestructible i have heard it described as a volvo 700 or 900 as a gateway drug to big old mercedes estates and that's probably a fair assessment in my case volvo 740 is a gateway drug to a car already wanted a ford crown victoria which is nothing like this well extremely tough but the interior is not as nice and this is quite incredible this uh wood the plastic the trim everything is just rock solid nothing feels like it's ever going to rattle then you rattle in the car right now is coming from my camera mount it's just quite cool when a car like this with that great big star down the far under the bonnet which i actually kind of missed i've got a w210 but it's the amg sport version so that c-class has not got the star on the bonnet and i actually kind of missed that because looking down here now i can see the trees kind of flowing up the bonnet in their reflection and the star is just sitting there glistening in the sunlight that's actually quite a magical thing i'll be honest with my w123 that is something i'm really looking forward to experiencing now i mentioned earlier there were lots of engine options you could get in one of these there are also various transmission options there was a five speed auto i believe there's a manual option uh on w123 that the choice of automatic on the in the center on the floor or up on the column now incredibly on these cars you could even get 4matic four-wheel drive i don't think it was ever sold in the uk but that kind of thing and certainly mountainous parts of europe was a pretty common and popular choice this is not a car you're ever going to win a drag race in but you can just arrive anywhere you go relaxed feeling like you're in command i have just been sprayed with yucky stuff off that truck in front which does mean i do get to experience that amazing wiper that is something amazing it's like it's writing a letter b across the uh the windscreen and like a big capital b on its side with that clever little canted mechanism quite an innovative bit of design so it's one wiper but we've got virtually no unswept area in either corner and no need to change the mechanism for left or right hand drive this isn't really the kind of car you go for a naught to 60 in because you run out of road it's also not very dignified but it's just so comfortable so often if you wanted a daily retro classic kind of car to just enjoy on a daily basis you could use this quite happily the thing with these is they were so well built and so common that for a long time it was hard to see them as a classic car because they were just so good they were kind of everywhere about 10 years ago you could pick them up for a grand grand and a half a really nice really good shiny rust free fairly low mileage just stay and just use it and use it but time rust mot guys who are not willing to let them through with quite that many defects have thinned the herd quite significantly and they really aren't around as much as they used to be and suddenly people have appreciated well people always appreciate them but now it's hard to find one to to acquire and appreciate without it being more of a cosseted classic they do still come up if you search auto trader marketplace you'll find one that maybe some guy bought new back in 1990 and he's had it on his drive ever since and perhaps giving up driving now but more and more they do tend to be in the uh the classic network which in a way is good because they will not be preserved rather than just used to death but if you were looking for a car just use so lightly on a day-to-day basis as a classic daily you'd do a lot worse than one of these in fact almost everything you could choose would be worse than one of these this is just so nice to waft in oh i do hope my w123 is half as nice as this is when it finally gets on the road now if i was specking one of these for my own use i think i would probably want the 280 so it's got a little bit more poke as always i'll go for the manual because i'm no fan of an automatic in really anything but i also would quite like the estate version yeah 280 te manual that'll be my dream perfect w124 i could be happy with that i could daily that pretty much forever however as i do seem to have a habit of buying quite nice saloon cars really i don't know my volvo my w123 my mother p6s this wouldn't be out of place on my drive at all well thank you for joining me today on this ride out in this car it is really quite interesting it's a development of a car which i own but have yet to physically drive more than a few feet up and down the driveway uh so yes it's quite interesting it's uh not fast it is comfortable there's a lot of luxury bit going on there in a late 80s early 90s kind of way and it just feels like it's the most solid car i've ever been in i'm kind of taking with it it's not fast but it is comfy so there you go hope you've enjoyed this if you have please hit the like and subscribe buttons as always and hit that little bell notification thing down there for seeing next time and i'll see you next time driving something completely different

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 36,196

Rating: 4.9250584 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, mercedes, merc, w124, 260e, e class, saloon, german car, 80s, 1980s, eighties, 80s car, 90s car, luxury car, young timer, test drive, road test, car review, classic review

Id: WgV839ZjnMs

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021