A couple of years ago a guy in a Toyota rear-ended my 79 300sd...the front of his car was BADLY crumpled, his airbag went off....It looked like he hit a wall!

I barely felt the impact. It felt like I hit a pothole or speed bump or something. The only damage to my car was bent bumper mounts\shocks. I went to the Pull-a-Part salvage yard and got mounts for $13, and pocketed the rest of the $$.

Mike

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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
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1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
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1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

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adding immensely to the cost and complexity of a car, while perhaps not protecting occupants to a much greater degree.

If I could choose the vehicle to be in during an accident, I'd rather be in a W123 wearing my seatbelt in almost any encounter with fate. These cars were designed to protect BOTH the occupants AND the vehicle...bumpers you could bump, collision panels that could be replaced after a collision. A "safety cage" to absorb energy (an historical note...this feature gos back to the pontons).

A large amount of safety equipment on modern cars is what I would possibly term "gratuitous." It adds immensely to purchase price, and to the cost of repairs...on a macabre note, it may also cost insurers because victims involved in an accident which might have been fatal (and thus subject of a one-time death payment) now have medical, surgical, and rehabilitative costs running to many multiples of what would have otherwise been paid if the occupant had been declared dead on the scene.

Should next year's models be equipped with lifeboats in case the cars go off a bridge into a river? IS there a point where a car is "too safe" to make sense?

What happens when Mercedes' comes out with the new W221 S-Class with 16 airbags. After 15 years, each one of them will have to be replaced! Aye!

There's your lifeboat:p

i wonder if we took the money being put into all this new safety technology and put into teaching people how to drive correctly...it takes a whole 20 minutes for a 16 yr old to be able to be turned loose with a 7000lb Navigator or an Escalade.....i think if you had to do a little more than just thumb through a DMV booklet and then not hit a few cones on your driving test, the roads might be a little safer....but NOOOOO, you can take that $60k Navigator, run it smack into a telephone pole while you either talk on the phone or put makeup on, and umpteen different pillows will inflate to save your stupid non-driving ass

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1985 300SD 192,000miles...Astral silver/ Grey MbTex

1983 300D 194,000miles...White/Tan MbTex...my newest addiction

trya dding rust to the equation. Ask me how I know? Well, I'll tell you. 6 months agop I was rear ended by a '94 Grand Am at probably 20mph. I was in my '79 300SD. Well, it broke her front license plate holder and bent something. Total damage to her car was $84. Mine, well it popped bondo off that the PO lady had done and bent the frame and door frame. Also left a crease right behind the gas filler lid. Total estimate for my car was $3000. Got it all completely fixed though for $900 and even got some other rust spots fixed with bondo. I know, should have done fiberglass. Anyways, my car didn't even seem to be that rusty, oh well.
David

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2000 Honda Accord V6 137k miles

1972 300SEL 4.5 98k miles

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shhhh! dont tell anyone Want '71. we dont want to hear that.

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'73 VW camper
'80 300td wagon

Funny this should happen at this specific time, but...

Today a Chevelle and a Dodgy Neon both backed out of their parking spots at the same time less than 5mph. *WHILE TALKING ON THEIR PHONES*. The Chevelle had no damage at all. The neon's bumper was torn a nice crack down the center and quite alot of paint was scraped away.



I wonder what would happen if two W123's hit?

If two W123's hit, absolutely nothing.

The W123 was the last true tank that would not ding up from a minor accident. The W126 was the last MB(in the US) to have the ultra stong bumpers and shock absorbers. The problem with the W126, is that the paint off the polyurethane can fleck off in an accident.

And, we all miss those sideguards from the W116 and W123.

Hows the W201 do in a bad times? I'm looking at an 87 190D today...

A low speed impact in a W201, might damage the impact strip. The impact strip is fairly cheap to replace. No the bumpers were not made to take huge belts like the older cars, but they can still take a low speed impact belt well enough.

My mom got hit by an '86 Deville(old woman backed up into it), at a speed around 5 mph. My mom's car was an '87 300E. It cracked the impact strip. I believe the W201 and W124 for the US, were the first Benz's to have 2.5 mph rated bumpers.

My mom got into an offset frontal collision with a Honda Accord in our 190D. It was in the shop for about a month being fixed and cost over $5000, but that's not bad considering each car was traveling at about 30 mph (60 total). Interestingly enough, the airbag didn't deploy. I guess the impact/crush sensor is in the center of the car. My mom was fine.

In the mid eighties when my first 240D started getting ragged I was looking for another. I saw a late model for sale in a driveway and stopped to look at it.

I knocked on the door and a friendly middle aged woman gave me the key and said she would be out in a few minutes. The first thing I did was open the hood and immediately saw SERIOUS crumple damage at the bottom of the right wheel well. She came out and I asked her how bad the accident was. She choked back some tears and said that her teenage son and a friend had a serious accident and that the car saved her sons life, but that the friend was not so lucky.

The car was almost new so it was worth a lot of money and had been totaled, but they had the car fixed, I assume by a low dollar body shop. The body work on the outside looked reasonably good, but they didn't do much do disguise the pulling of the crumple zone. I, of course, was not going to buy the car and did not ask any further details for fear of upsetting the woman further.

When you consider the cars of the time, I belive these cars are extremely safe. That said, you just never know about injuries in an accident. Over the years I've seen cars that just looked like no one could have survived only to find that they walked or stumbled away. Then there others with seemingly minor damage in which there was a fatality.

If you look at the safety technology that was in the 123's though, safety was definitely an important design criteria. MB started two generations earlier with crumple zones, telescoping columns, seatbacks designed to break a certain way, head restraints, comfortable shoulder harnesses. And also often overlooked by many are accident avoidance items such as four wheel disc brakes, decent and predictable handling, etc.

My daughter was such an aggressive driver, even at an early age(she started driving when she was eight because we live in the country,) I told her that I would not turn her loose in a car until I could get one with front, rear, side, top and bottom airbags. Short of a car equipped this way, for a car of its time, there would be very few cars any safer.

Have a great day,

Yep. Working as an EMT then Paramedic, I saw this a lot. We'd roll up on something that I just KNEW I'd be calling the patient and just heading back to the station. Look around for a patient in the car and no one's there and no blood. Turns out, they're standing around with the onlookers.

Then other fender benders I've rolled on that had completely intact pass compartments and a patient with a torn aorta (DOA) or even worse, one that had a ruptured spleen that I "almost" let walk.

Was called on a horse vs car MVA once, dusk/rainy, when we arrived, the car, a honda civic, was crushed in like king kong stepped on it. Horse had been shot by a passerby (most people who live rurally here are smart enough to carry a firearm in the vehicle.) Figured we'd be extracting a DOA. No one inside, no blood. She was standing around joking with the people who stopped to help.

Her story was, just before she hit the horse, she saw it run right towards her and she knew she'd go out of control if she tried to avoid it, so she just braked and bent over toward the passenger seat. Roof and windshield crushed into her, but she had enough space that she didn't get hurt. The people who stopped to help pried the door open and helped her out. Not a scratch. We still X-ported her for eval.

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1984 300D Turbo - 4-speed manual conversion, mid-level resto

1983 300D - parts car

1979 300TD Auto - Parts car.

1985 300D Auto - Wrecked/Parts.


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"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". Lewis Carrol

Well I took out a mailbox when I first started driving (long story) at 45mph and it did jack **** to my bumper. All it did was bend up my license plate and plate holder. Knocked the mail box out of the ground!

There's a guy on here who barrel rolled in his 190D and I believe he said the doors all opened and closed and even sunroof still worked. I can't remember who it was though.

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1984 190D 2.2 Auto 220k
2001 Jeep Cherokee Sport 70K
2004 Lexus RX-330 ??K
2005 Chrylser Crossfire LTD 6K

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