soot or dirt?
Are you sure it's soot and not just dirt?
I don't know the w126 at all, but soot is serious no matter the car. It means incomplete combustion products from somewhere are getting into the cabin, and probably a lot of them (or a little from a real sooty source). That's serious. Unless you have a combusion-powered block heater, the only thing burning should be fuel, which would indicate you have an exhaust leak getting into the cabin. You could also have something else burning that isn't supposed to be doing so (e.g. something under the dash).. also pretty serious since it is continuing.
If it were my D, I'd drive my gasser while I dropped the under dash panel on the drivers side to figure out its source and how its getting into the cabin.
Dirt, on the other hand, probably isn't as much of a concern and might be coming in from the ventilation system or through the firewall where the pedal linkage goes through.
I'm kind of coming up blank on how to definatively test to see which it is.
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