Two years ago, I purchased my 1995 E320 Wagon to replace my 1999 Chevrolet Silverado pickup as my general purpose workhorse vehicle. A decision I have not regretted, since other than towing cars, 90% of what I used the pickup for can be done with the wagon. Plus it’s ever so much a nicer place to be, easier to park, and, to my eye, extremely cool. With now 237k on the clock, it remains rock solid with a flawless Gore Tex interior. My only non-stock modification has been adding 16” E420 wheels with 215 section tires, and I repainted the lower body panels white to replace the silver, so it’s solid white. I’ve also fixed a bunch of stuff—replaced the radiator and cooling hoses, fixed the rear hatch shocks (a ridiculously complicated task), fixed the parking brake and central locking, fixed the leaking transmission input shaft seal, etc. The car came with fairly new Bilstein struts and good brakes, so I haven’t had to do much there. It’s a reliable car that I find myself grabbing the keys to more often than the other more “involving” i.e., temperamental cars in my stable. It’s just a sweetheart. I’d upload photos if I could figure out how to resize them in my ipad.

At this point, I’m trying to decide what to do moving forward. The AC evaporator is leaking (like they all do), so it has inop AC. That’s a job I can handle myself with a lot of time, advice from this forum, and my advanced degree from YouTube University. More worrying is the rust in the bottoms of the rear windows. It’s barely even noticeable from outside, but pull away the inner panels, and you can see that the window seals have leaked and there’s rust in the channels. I can weld in new metal and fix the rust, but getting those large back windows out without breaking is a daunting task. I imagine they are pretty hard to replace. My record with glass replacement is, uh, shattered.

There are always a couple of these cars available locally in the $4-6k range (most with over 200k miles, never with working AC), and the window channel problem is sort of hit or miss, so I could find a rust-free car as a replacement, perhaps in a cooler color than white (red, blue or green would be my choices). But I’d almost certainly be trading one set of problems for another. Or I could just leave everything be and drive it as is, but, it’s kind of too noble a car to neglect.

Decisions, decisions . . .

dr Truth
1989 BMW 325i 2.9 stroker
1995 Mercedes E320 Wagon
2014 Porsche Cayman