W210 road noise

[VW1300]

Drove another '96 E300 a local dealer has for sale. This one was in very nice condition. One thing - driving at highway speed, the cabin seemed noisy, kind of like being on a plane or driving on a very windy day. Sort of a subdued, steady roar(?) at highway speed. Not deafening, but noticeable and my '85 300D doesn't have it. Tires were Continentals, which don't seem to get a lot of feedback on the forums with regards to being noisy.

After scouring this forum, I see that it could be driveline related. Question - would a good indy MB mechanic be able to determine if it's a wheel bearing, or some other source? I see that sometimes owners replace these bearings and noises go away, sometimes it's a hunt. I was going to have mechanic go over the car pre-purchase anyway. But if it could be problematic to track down, I may not consider the car at all.

That would be a shame, it's otherwise in good condition as far as I can tell and I'd prefer a '96, since it's the least complicated of that generation and no turbo means fewer speeding tickets for me.

By the way, slightly off-topic, but anyhow - Star Motors here in Houston had a '98 E300TD listed one day a few weeks ago and I went to see it. Salesman, a kindly gentleman, showed me four pages of printout information from his MB computer - car had been dealer serviced from day one, and it had 210,000 miles! He then took me to the garage where a mechanic was in the midst of changing glow plugs and fuel lines. He said he'd call when it was ready to drive. A few days went by and I called him back. He said it turned out there was a lot more wrong with the car than they had thought and it was going to take a while to straighten it out. I told him I appreciated him taking the effort to sell a used car in good faith with repairs already done.

Lesson from that - just because a car has been MB serviced for its life, doesn't mean it's a well maintained car. Owners can still be ignorant of problems or unwilling to have them addressed.

thanks,