MB Tex was standard, leather optional - not sure what fraction have leather.

I'm not aware of any door panel problems, but with any 15-20 year old car, condition has to do with the quality and conscienceousness of owners and quality of past maintenance and repairs.

Once cars get down to five grand or less, owners are rarely willing to spend much on them and just drive them into the ground. Only when they become "collectible" and begin to appreciate will significant effort be put into repair and restoration. I don't expect 190s to ever achieve collectible status, and they, unfortunately, have become "beaters" for many.

The typical example that has probably been through three or more owners and has over 150K miles likely has a lot of deferred maintenance and a number of problems ready to bite you, and proper repair is usually not cheap. Sometimes you get lucky and find a simple solution, but many overlook good diagnosis and just throw parts at problems until they get fed up with the amount they have spent and dump them. A number of systems are fairly complicated and require considerable system knowledge to properly and effectively troubleshoot and repair.

The best examples would be original owner low mileage cars with maintenance and repair records, especially if the owner is a "car guy".

The current NADA Older Used Car Guide lists "retail" values of $2550 for a '87 190E 2.6 to $4800 for a '93 190E 2.6 (2.3s are about 10 percent less). Really fine, documented examples should do better, but on average most look pretty thrashed at this point in time and aren't worth much.

Duke