One of my mother's former employers (and a good friend of hers as well) had a 85' 300D in his carport that had been sitting for 5 years or so, because he had parked it thinking it had a major transmission problem. So it turns out that he was going to junk it, but I convinced him to give it to me instead.

I towed the car home, and put a new battery in it, and it started up on the first try (instantly) and, after driving it around the block a couple times, it was immediately apparent that the only thing wrong with it was that the shifter linkage bushings are bad...and that's the noise that he was hearing, which made him thing the tranny was gone. It sifts PERFECT, btw... has 117k miles.

Here are some pics of it next to my big gasser.

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Current cars:
2000 ML55 AMG, 174k miles
2003 C240 T-Modell, 202k miles
1995 S320, 207k Miles