W202/W124 as a daily driver

[SilverSaloon]

It s possible but you're likely to spend more than that - maybe twice as much - getting it up to speed

Lack of proper maintenance is a real problem. The cars disguise faults very well and you may end up buying trouble - as a forum member did, buying a diesel estate which needs new rear wheel bearings

Nick Froome

Indeed. That mas me... I'm happy to get handy with the spanners so my bargain basement multivalve estate isnt going to cost me much to get up to scratch (as it was on the cuff of being neglected). I wont say how much it cost me but it was cheap! And the bodywork is pretty good. All it needed was a full service of all fluids, discs, pads and those bearings, plus a bloody good clean inside and out!!!!! I bought it and it was put into daily use straight away without any work and i've been doing it gradually. You could of bought it, budgetted maybe £500 for a garage to do all the work and it would still be cheap..... and just as good (apart from maybe the history files) as my green estate, which came from CI.

on the flip side, my green estate came from Charles Ironside at a considerable amount of money above what I paid for the silver estate. However its not really needed any work to it since i got it other than standard maintenance). no rust when i got it (sadly the wings are shot now but thats my fault for lack of looking after them more i guess). I've done almost 70k in it since I got it and not had any major problems with the car itself.

good luck.

 

[NW_Merc]

They're nice when you find a well-made example with no rust and with an ECU that isn't about to fail!

You get what you pay for usually, of course dealers have big mark-ups but a private seller selling one for under £1000 usually means they know it's not worth more because it has its problems

Apparently the ECU problem only affected C200s not every single model within the range. I have one which is over 12 years old (not a C200).

 

[Jupiter1]

Hi I am new on this forum - I just bought a W124 300e petrol last week. It's not really a daily driver, I just like having a retro car to use at weekends and something to do work on (my rule is not to lose too much money if I sell on a year later but just hopefully enjoy different cars that I could never have owned when they were new/current vehicles if that makes sense...?)

Well my 300 has a few problems but nothing that will break the bank hopefully. Yesterday I used it for the 120 miles daily roundtrip work commute (almost all motorway) which gave it a good run out and it was fine.

If I were in a normal situation where I didn't live too far from work I would definately consider this car as my main vehicle. (However at present, my modern Skoda Superb diesel can do 70-plus mpg on the motorway so nothing can really take its place - old vehicles just cannot do that sort of economy! and there's the additional safety/ ease of use etc....)

I would say definately look at a W124, mine was only 600 pounds, ok it needs a few things doing but equally - in its current condition, and it looks very respectable not an old dog - it could just be run with no attention other than an oil service and would "probably" keep trudging away day to day for a good while yet. Don't think I would be inclined to spend more than 1500/2000 and as people have suggested you should expect some costs after purchase on any ageing vehicle.

 

[stephen coy]

You should be getting about 33 mpg round town

Nick Froome

Hi
Thanks for the info'.Trouble is, I live in a hilly area, so at junctions/stops, the car is constantly having to haul itself up to speed.Also the drive to work (7 miles) is littered with traffic lights which predictably always hit red as I approach

It did well when I brought it back from the previous owner, cruising at around the 80 mark/motorway driving

 

[Grahamcol]

For what it's worth, I'm a great fan of the W202. I've had 3 of them and my "original" C200 bought nearly 6 years ago as a daily driver is still going strong and absolutely no rust at all. I disagree with other comments here about them being flimsy. Trust me, I've driven a couple of Mondeos and the sturdiness of the W202 in comparison seems very apparent. Ok, they might not be quite as good as the W124 but in my humble opinion they're every bit as good (or better) than the W201 that everyone raves about. I have a W201 which is ok, I guess, but at 93k miles it doesn't drive anywhere near as well as the W202 C200 at 136k miles.