an old freind has experienced the belt tensioner and the airbag of a W124 - he tells me that the seat belt holds you incredibly tight and then the airbag goes off - 1 stage airbag means - its got quite some more force than the 2 stage modern ones. He had severe bruises from the seat belt but no serious injuries.

His experience was quite horrific as he T boned a car going through an intersection.

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)

I was in a fairly bad accident in a w123. All the cars were stopped and I was rear ended, pushed forward and to the side, the driver continued and plowed into the car in front of me and then that car hit the one in front of it. Chain reaction in other words, with the rear quarter of my 123 taking most of the damage.

Car had good crash dynamics and it buckled in a way so to spread the damage. Likely not unlike many cars today. 5 MPH bumpers may have absorbed more energy than the foam filled 2.5 MPH plastic bumpers of today.

Fortunately the crash dynamic and how I oriented my car prevented any steering wheel contact, but there was a substantial brunt of impact on the car. While airbags and whatnot do have their place, all that would have happened if the car had more fancy stuff is that another few thousand dollars worth of safety equipment would have deployed without any benefit, and instead of walking A-OK, I probably would have felt like I was punched in the face.

Thats not to poo-poo airbags. But the w123 has good dynamics and survives crashes well. Im comfortable with it being a safe car.

Speed on the other hand is a concern. I am one to say that people who can't handle the acceleration of 240D cars on any major road anyplace in the USA are imbeciles. I find it stupid that people think they need 300HP V6 cars to safely merge. That said, some added responsiveness might add some level of accident avoidance because of other peoples' poor judgement and uncontrollability. Thats just speculation though, and people driving too fast for the conditions will always be a menace.

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Current Diesels:
1981 240D (73K)
1982 300CD (169k)
1985 190D (169k)
1991 350SD (113k)
1991 350SD (206k)
1991 300D (228k)
1993 300SD (291k)
1993 300D 2.5T (338k)
1996 Dodge Ram CTD (442k)
1996 Dodge Ram CTD (265k)

Past Diesels:
1983 300D (228K)
1985 300D (233K)

Are you referring to that segment of the driving population that never goes over 1/4 throttle? Perhaps they think it's bad for the car.

We don't get much of that around here. Too slow for conditions, left lane blocking, and not going when the light turns green are the typical gripes on my commute. Extra power is helpful in exploiting gaps in traffic and getting around the slugs.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.