I retired the 72 220D back in March. I'm moving out to BFN and my daily commute is going from ~50 miles/day to ~130 miles/day, so I knew I needed something more comfortable. I picked up an 05 E320 CDI that's been a great car. I've put 20k miles on it since getting it, and I wish I had gotten one long ago.
My commute is virtually all interstate, so I get great economy: the feel-goodometer in the dash has shown as high as 46 mpg some days. In practice, I find the actual economy to be about 4mpg less than the dash says...even so, I'm still happy with it. The most miles I've gotten out of a tank is 705 at 35.89 mpg. I track my economy
religiously. I'm still in a transition from the old commute to the new, so this is a mix of both. Once I'm fully changed over I'll be excited to see how much better the fuel economy gets.
I also love the ease of maintenance. Oil changes every 7000 miles, I just did new brake pads all around about two months ago, and I'll be changing the tranny filter either this or next weekend--I have another oil change and the front flex coupling (I already changed the rear, just for preventative maintenance reasons) up this weekend. It's all a piece of cake.
CONS:
That darn SBC system. It hasn't given any issues, but I know it's a only a matter of time. Depending on the shape/mileage of the car when that happens, I'll probably just get a new pump if I can put it in myself.