As there has been a lot of W114 activity recently, I thought I would post a period review of a 1973 Mercedes Benz 280CE from Auto Car Magazine. A very popular weekly periodical from back in the day.

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With best regards

Al

Notice the labor rate for service is @ 2.50 GBP per hour! Those were the good old days!

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With best regards

Al

good read. thx. wonder how rare the five speeds are, either left or right hand drive?

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

I saw a couple of 250CE's and 280CE's in the UK with 5 speeds. While by far, the majority of UK drivers drive cars with manual gearbox. Most MB's that went to the UK were automatics because MB made such a good automatic gearbox. If you wanted a fast German saloon with a manual, then you would buy a BMW.

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With best regards

Al

Great read Al, I have a book of all the road tests from Road and Track on Mercedes from '68-76ish I think. I should scan in some of those too.

Thank you very much for that awesome post.

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1976 280C
SLOWER DRIVERS KEEP TO THE RIGHT.
DRIVE RIGHT PASS LEFT

Thanks Al ! I enjoyed reading that ....

You're welcome, I have a bunch of w108, R107 and W126 articles also from period mags that I plan to upload.

I figured out that I can snap a picture with my digital camera quite easily and post it without having to go through the aggro of scanning it so it's not a lot of work.

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With best regards

Al

well, any and all further magazine posts appreciated. reading them is kind of like traveling back in time.

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Great read. Thanks for posting. Much appreciated.

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1986 560 SEL
1960 Ranchero
1970 Cougar XR7
2002 Crown Vic Sport
1992 F150

Two and a half quid an hour in 1973? Wow that is shed loads for back then - I bet regional variations made it well worth while for a Londoner to take a driving holiday to Cornwall and get his car serviced there. (That's still quite a good trick today)

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

It sounds to be good value. If you work it out. The car in the article cost about 5000GBP and the labor rate is 2.50 GBP per hour.

This means that the cost of a car = 2000 hours of labor.

A new equivalent MB costs about $60,000 and today's dealer rate is $120/hr (in the Dallas) which means that the cost of a car = 500 hours of labor.

As far as I remember, if you're a Londoner, you're going to get shafted no matter where you go in the country

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With best regards

Al

I thought the performance figures said a lot. 0-60 in 8.1 seconds is quite good and only the BMW3.0 was quicker . The BMW (i have owned some) was OK and a genuine performance car but fragile compared with the mercedes and today there are far more 280's still running than BMW 3.0 's.
A lot of cars on todays market still only average 0-60 times in 9.0 seconds and fuel consumption is similar but not much better. So much for cash for clunkers.
The German Mercedes Classic magazine tested a 280CE recently and the top speed was quoted at 128MPH.