German 190D value?
 

A guy has offered my dad a German 190D. It is a 1986 2.5 Auto with I think he said it was 315,000 miles on it (or km not sure if it was a converted number, didn't look close enough). It is white with a blue MB Tex interior and the interior and exterior are in great shape. The engine has a new head on it. I did not get to hear it run or see it drive but that can be arranged, we just popped in to pick up some parts for our 190D and saw it and he told us about it. He said he will probably put it on craigslist for $2500 but it would let us have it for $2000. Are the German models worth more than US spec? What are the differences, besides the language on labels and the headlights?

Hard to say without pics but $2000 sounds like an ok price. If I were in the market for a 190 I would probably hold out for one with a manual transmission.

manual climate controls.

EDIT: read the OPs sig, I probably didn't tell him anything he didn't know.

I don't even think all euro 190Ds have manual climate controls, plenty of euro 124s with options came with automatic climate control. There was a Euro 2.5 up here for sale, that had cloth but automatic climate control.

$2,000 for a 190D doesn't sound bad if its not a rusty car, they are fairly uncommon cars, I hesitate to use the word rare like some people do on here, gullwings are rare, finding a 190d usually just requires searching two different cities on craigslist. As for the value of it being a euro, meh, its a coolness factor but euro cars were fairly common in the 80s, if I had the choice between two clean 190Ds and one was the euro, I'd pick the euro. But I wouldn't pick a beat car over a nice one on the grounds it was a euro, or pay a ton more money for one just because it had euro headlights.

Mine is a superficially rusty US 2.5 with 144k and I paid $600, but its my girlfriends snow car to keep salt off the new Audi. Parking the quattro for the winter and getting out the rwd car with no abs, go figure. A member on here sold me euro headlights for $80, and I unplugged the egr, so its pretty much a euro now.

They are great cars even with the auto, they getting better city fuel economy in my experience, they've got real short real ends so they move around easy, but if you like to drive 85mph like I do, you're winding the crap out of it. If you can keep it to 55-65 they do fabulous on fuel even with the auto.

Hmm, is it 'white' or "Hellelfenbein, RAL 1015 (light ivory)" which would make it a taxi?

Mine is.

My dad calls it the Bosnian Taxi.

Did the European models come with a 2.0 instead of the US 2.2 / 2.5?

You mean did other markets get the choice of a 2.0 as well as 2.2 and 2.5?

this one was the 2.5 and to the best of my knowledge it was an actual Euro car

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

I had the impression from other threads on this forum that the 2.2 was offered in the US where a 2.0 was offered in Europe during the same era. I have no idea if this is accurate, hense the question asking if his model had a 2.0.

You are correct, in the case of the Euro 4cyl OM601 it was a 2.0, and the US 4cyl OM601 was a 2.2L with EGR.

In the US it was 2.2 from 84-85, and 2.5 OM602 5cyl from 86-88.

However, in Europe the 2.0 and 2.5 were offered simultaneously. So the OP is talking about a euro 2.5L 5cylinder car.