You know, it's funny you say this. I compare DIY car work to weight lifting/working out. I loathe the thought of it until I get my blue overall dickies on and get into the thick of things. Then partway through, I revel in the mucky, oily gritty, glory of it all. When I'm done, I get a deep sense of satisfaction. Agree though, these cars are poor investments.

My wife for some odd reason loves me covered in grease. I lucked out on this one.

With that said, I'd like to share my tale of woe to the group.

I purchased my 380sl sight unseen from Ebay. The seller was a retired salesman of a dealer in SoCal. The car had a stack of dealer repair receipts, recent restoration, and all sorts of goodies. I thought everything was hunky dory and I decided to just take ownership of it for $8k.

Well fast forward a few days, my heart sank when I discovered that the subframe had the infamous r107 crack in it from worn suspension components. I don't have the equipment to handle such a repair so I had to farm it out.

Next up, turns out the car sat for a long time and the gas tank had gummed up, clogging all sorts of fuel delivery components. Another $1k there (my own hard work).

Oh but wait! Turns out that the same "dealer" who had done a bunch of repair work ended up f*cking up the rebuild by putting RTV on the intake gaskets causing an air leak. Instead of RTFM, they drilled two holes into the thermostat and retarded the timing to get it to pass smog. This caused the car to drink fuel and run like utter $hit. Another $1k there.

Oh and that "restoration"? A really ****ty paint job and the redone MBTEX is starting to fray. Just enough of a restore to pass it along to the next sucker.

I'd also spent bits and bobs here and there. I'm probably about $14-15k into my ride. Realistically, I need another $2000 to make it mechanically sound. Need a new radiator, belts, power steering rebuild, and a soft top because the old one is crap. I get depressed seeing otherwise well-sorted r107s with all of the bits i'm replacing selling for that $8k.

However, about a year ago I went to a GTG where I met an interesting fellow who has a startup here in Los Angeles. I did some work for him and met another guy through him who asked me to sign on with him. A few months later, we landed a few clients and are now getting paid some real money with the opportunity for a metric ton of cash more.

So as the old Knight in Indiana Jones would say, "I choose poorly", the outcome from buying my 380sl has been fortuitous to my career which has jumped by leaps because of the people I met through this crazy hobby. I also adore driving this thing, I get a lot of love from people giving me thumbs up for driving the old beast. Much more than I did with my 300D.

I'm firmly in the, "I drive it and fix it because I love it" territory. This is my only bad investment and I just DGAF because I look so cool driving it.

It's also our only car, but I work from home so it only saw 6-7k miles last year.

This is me everytime I get in my car:

Moral of the story: don't buy cars sight unseen without a pre-purchase inspection.

Edit: I should also add, a photographer in my neighborhood uses my car for photoshoots. Here's a teasing sample. You all should recognize that interior.




The most recent one was a bit more scandalous I'm waiting to see those pictures.

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.