Just looked at a 240D, could use advise

[spliteye]

Hello everyone,

its been a while since I made a post. I'm a bit tired as well, so please excuse me if I sound like a dolt. I'm finally back in the market for a Mercedes diesel. So, I went and looked at a 240D today.

The car was surprisingly clean. The original owner is selling it, she is in her 90s. It's a 1983 with 166K miles. The body had a couple dings, but nothing serious. The paint was in good shape, mainly just had some cracking. The interior was a definite 9/10.

The car is an automatic. I know that the automatics are slower and that manual transmissions are more reliable, but I have a bad left leg and I don't think a manual is in the cards for me. When I drove the car, I noticed that it shifted from 1st to 2nd at what must have been two or three miles per hour at 1/2 to 2/3 throttle. Is this normal? The transmission didn't slip, but it did shift fairly hard and kind of jolted the car a bit.

The car was very slow. Yeah, I know, its a 240D, but I watched a video online of a guy with an automatic 240D hitting 60 in just about a minute. The car I just drove did fine after 30 or so, but the start was horrid, way slower than the car in that video. I was thinking this could have to do with the extremely low shift points?

The engine also had blowby. The oil cap danced around quite a bit when I did the test (understandably so with how the engine vibrated). A fair amount of smoke billowed out. To the engines defense, for the last 5 years it has only seen about a thousand miles a year and that's all been driving to her retirement community's pool house and to the store. I doubt the car has seen the freeway (or over 35 mph) more than a few times the past several years. It also has been sitting most of this year. Would some freeway runs help this?

From what I have told you, what are your opinions of this car? Is it worth pursuing? Any input is appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan