Congratulations on your new car!

I have 4 W123s. The twin 6 Euro is my favorite. The Euro version is significantly faster than the US version. The car even looks so much nicer with those Euro lights and short bumpers. It has this wonderful sound and loves to be revved high. Someone told me that if I would bring it back to original Euro specs it would be a lot faster. Wow! It's tempting me . . .

The only disadvantage is that it only gets 15 mpg in the city and maybe 19 on the highway. The manual trans cars are supposed to do better. My daughter is sore at me because I put her diesel away and gave her the 280E for the winter and she doesn't like the gas bills (but she does like to go fast!). Of course, the diesels have their own special charm . . .

A good thing is that these go pretty cheap. I've seen decent examples go bidless on e-bay. I think that a W126 with a 4 or 5 speed manual tranny would really be nice and it would be faster than a 420SEL. Too bad I have too many cars!

The weakness of the M110 are the leaking valve guides that happen at 175K-200K miles. The bottom ends are bullet-proof.

My plan for my POS 1980 280CE (never drink beer while cruising Ebay!) is to find the Euro version of the motor and a manual tranny. That would be nice!!

Joe Gottschlich
1995 E420
1982 300D
1978 280E
1980 280CE
1985 300D (crunched)