I bought both coupes I have off ebay in the same auction. I was a little dissapointed when I saw them, the descriptions were not completly accurate.
I found out on carfax one had been in a 'minor accident'
I printed out the auction listing and still have it. (My comments in parentheses)
Car 1: the 1982 300CD;
"This car has a silver repainted exterior (very shoddy paint job, clear coat on only half the roof), with some rust on the underside of the trunk lid (as well as everywhere
in the trunk, on the quarter panels and near the hood hinges), there is a dent on the passenger side door (nope, it was the drivers door and I had to replace the whole door), the black interior is in very good shape, the only real area of wear is on the drivers seat where a smal hole has formed (is 6"x4" small???? even the padding underneath was gone!) the sunroof works (uh, no it didn't. even to this day it only slightly works when its warm out). The engine runs excellent and has an original 144K miles" (so according to its odometer it is exactly 0 miles from NY to Maryland...)
Other surprises when picking it up included a completly broken (at least 5 cracks) rear window, non working rear windows and non working climate control (AND it was hot AND it was raining that day, FOGGED windows!!!)
Car 2: the 1983 300CD;
this one was pretty close to accurate, although there wasnt much listed about it.
"car has 282K miles but the motor was replaced about 10k miles ago with an engine with 180k on it and it has new ball joints"
and then we have the usual ebay listing diesel car requirement:
"both of these cars will easily go another 300K miles"
well, I did win it, both cars for $3,150. sold the 83 to my friend for half the listing price. It turned out to have low compression in cyl 1 and lasted about a year. He had actually resold it on ebay and was driving to meet the winning bidder when the engine started knocking and a few minutes later, threw a rod. So now I have it again (he owed me $250 for getting him, and putting in a new torque converter and flex plate when his old one shattered and sheared off all the bolts on the converter since he continued to drive it
) when taking the trans out, I realized the engine was not made to match up to that trans, only 3 or 4 bolts were holding the two together! My guess originally was a 1978-80 300SD turbo engine but I guess it could have been a 81 300TD engine. The strange thing about it, there was no fitting on the oil pan for the oil drip tube from the air cleaner housing, what the hell?!