If you owned a car that had traveled more than 400,000 miles during its life, could you bear to send it into the cold steel jaws of The Crusher? In the course of my junkyard adventures, I've found quite a few vehicles that met such a fate. Here's a very solid Mercedes-Benz W123 oil-burner that now languishes in a self-service boneyard in Phoenix, Arizona.
417,046 miles is about the same as traveling 16-¾ times around Earth (using a great circle route, of course), and that distance is impressive even by Mercedes-Benz diesel standards.
417,046 miles is enough to get this car into 11th place in the Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer standings. Remember that 1985 W123 with 411,448 miles we saw in a Denver car graveyard a few years back? That car has been pushed down to 16th in the MMJO list.
Don't worry about a lack of Stuttgart iron in the MMJO Top Ten, Mercedes-Benz fans, because there are three at the moment:
- 1990 Volvo 240, 631k miles
- 1988 Honda Accord, 626k miles
- 1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E, 601k miles
- 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300 SD, 572k miles
- 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300 SD, 535k miles
- 1988 Honda Accord, 513k miles
- 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo, 493k miles
- 1990 Nissan Sentra, 440k miles
- 1991 Honda Accord, 435k miles
- 1996 Honda Civic, 435k miles
For those keeping nationalistic score, that's two cars built in Sweden, three built in West Germany, three built in the United States (the Sentra and the pair of 1990s Hondas), and two built in Japan. I'm sure there would be more Mercedes-Benzes on the list if junkyard shoppers didn't buy most W123 and W126 gauge clusters within days of hitting the yards, and more American-marque machinery if Detroit hadn't stuck with five-digit odometers until well into the 1990s.
Here's the legendary OM617 five-cylinder turbodiesel engine that got the job done so well. A junkyard customer showed up to extract the injectors while I was admiring this car.
This one was rated at 120 horsepower and 170 pound-feet, which wasn't a lot for a car scaling in at 3,585 pounds (fun fact: the current C-Class weighs quite a bit more than 1982's proto-E-Class). However, its naturally-aspirated sibling, the legendarily slow 240 D, had just 67 horses and 97 pound-feet.
American Mercedes-Benz shoppers in 1982 could get the 240 D with a four-on-the-floor manual transmission, but a four-speed automatic was mandatory on the U.S.-market 300 D.
It appears that the first chapters of this car's life took place on the roads of Southern California. Amato's Auto Body is still in the same location in San Diego shown on this sticker; the seven-digit telephone number suggests that the sticker is of 1990s or earlier vintage.
The sticker from Heinz Geitz's repair shop in La Jolla led me to a lot of interesting tales of the life and career of Herr Geitz (who passed away in 2017 at the age of 97). After spending most of World War II in a Soviet POW camp, he emigrated to the United States and took a job working for Mercedes-Benz here. In 1956, he became crew chief for Augie Pabst (yes, from that Pabst family), then migrated to La Jolla during the 1960s. His grandson founded HG Performance, a Mercedes-Benz tuner shop in San Marcos, that exists to the present day. You'll find plenty of history in the junkyard if you dig a little bit!
Cars that live near the Pacific in California can get some terrifying top-down rust from salt spray mixed with morning fog, but this car has just a touch of corrosion around the rear wheelwells from rainwater leakage past the trunk's weatherstripping.
The interior appears to have been in nice condition before junkyard shoppers bought most of the door panels and seats.
MB-Tex fake leather is amazing stuff. Ordinary upholstery would have been nuked into powder by four decades in the climate of San Diego and Phoenix.
In the end, even the BVM couldn't save this car from its junkyard fate.
The timing of the turbocharger-toting technician walking the banked oval worked out well for everyone involved in this commercial.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300 D W123 in Arizona wrecking yard.
[Images: The author]
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