The Haynes manual is simply a book. I'm not very sure they ever really tried jacking an actual 300E. The car is pretty low slung and you need a really low profile floor jack to be able to slide it under the car. I'm simply saying that from my experience with 3 W124's, (2 sold) for now going on 9 years, I'm not going under that car with it sitting on jack stands under the jack pads, no matter what the Haynes manual says.

I have two floor jacks that allow me to raise the car in stages, then I place the jack stands under sturdy sections of subframe and lower the floor jacks. Then I raise the floor jacks again as a further precaution.

Actually, I only go under for Transmission Service, Fuel Filter and Differential Service, so it's not very often.

Steve