My first car

It’s been over a decade ago, twelve years from now to be exactly, when I bought my first car. The only question for me, as far as I can remember, was what kind of car should I buy. Of course the most important factor was the prize because I still went to school and I did not earn much money at that time. Many schoolmates already had cars and most of their cars were small cars from VW, Peugeot, Toyota. Some cars were exterior costumized to look cool and fast - but most of them were not.

But I did not like smaller cars because many people drove them and I also did not want to have a car to be „individual and cool“. Though my father has been a long member of an historical car club he got me in touch with a person who sells upcoming historical cars. In Germany a car has to be at least 30 years old to get the historical status.

So I made contact with that guy and we met to take a look on some cars he was offering - and there I found my first car - a Mercedes Benz 230E type 123 constructed in 1982 with already 230.000 km on its back, but only 1200 €.

By buying this car in October 2004 I did not have any intention to keep this car very long and I also considered that it would not matter if I would damage this old car but the years passed - I finished my A-levels the following year, went to the german army to accomplish my military service duty and then started my two and a half year business education and went to university after it.

And during all those voyages and trips within that time I had a great and reliable partner which brought me to all those places - my Daimler.

Until 2011 - the German Association for Technical Inspection (TÜV) said „No way“. The front fenders are nearly destroyed by rust, the supporting components of the body showed excessive damage from corrosion, the engine was leaking oil, the exhaust pipe and the silencer looked like a metal-fishnet and the axle supports front and rear are more than „finished“. Overall more than 8.000 € to get this car on the road so I drove it into the barn, took of the license plates, disconnected the battery and closed the doors.

About three and a half years later my former girlfriend wanted to use the barn for her horse over the winter so she tried to convince me to get rid of that old piece of junk to have space for her one HP-car and I agreed. I still remember that day very well because I walked to the barn on a rainy and freezing cold morning in the hope of getting the old car started because I did not wanted to waste much time on it. I connected the old battery, got in front of the wheel and turned the key to check if it still got power, to my surprise it had, so I turned the key further to ignition - no choking, no rumbling - just a smooth starting engine like it was used the day before. This surprisingly great start combined with the familiar smell and the comfortable seats made me changing my mind within seconds. I wanted to keep this car and get it back on road.

In the upcoming wintertime I ordered several new parts like front fenders, suspension and axial parts, exhaust pipe including manifold, bottom plates for the trunk and many small parts i.e. special body screws and things like that.

The following should have been easy, at least I considered it to be, but getting off the old fenders should be three-days of work. First of all it was impossible to get off the under mudguards made of plastic because all screws were completely messed up by rust and dirt and it took me nearly a day to cut both out with the angle grinder.

Next: The same procedure with the fenders and another great day with the grinder and taking off nearly everything of the front area: Headlights, cooling-system, blinkers and so on.

By removing the rear bumpers and lights I discovered several holes in the bottom of the trunk and also the holding ports for the exhaust were literary gone, so this would be much more than just changing parts - I would have to produce special metal parts to fix the Daimler’s body. The body work was done about three month later - it already got warm and sunny outside.

After having the car painted by a local paint shop, the toughest of all parts should follow - restoring the engine. It turned out to be pretty easy disassembling it but finding a garage specialized for older engines was not. Most of the local garages told me that they would not do this because it would be „inefficient“ for them or they just did not want to do it. A special motor company in Hanover finally did it.

Back home again the rest of the restoring went on much faster then I would have expected and four days later it was done - I now could make a date with the TÜV and to my great surprise the Daimler passed the check without any complaint.

From this day on I am using the Daimler as my good-mode cruising car and when the streets are dry I also use it in my everyday life - and you can bet - this beauty never let me down.

In my opinion the type W123 is one of the best cars ever made.

So I hope you’ve like the article and if there’s someone out there who wants to know more about that cars technique just let me know.