Thank you all for coming. It means a lot to us all at MSIMA. Today we morn the loss of a friend in spirit and in metal. The death of a legend and the resignation from youthful passion, taken far too soon from us.

Our resident pimp, the purveyor of one too many Mercedes W126’s, and doofus who got my ass into BMW’s to begin with, has said goodbye to an e30 with the heart of an e36 m3. An abomination that’s been with us since high school, and the muse to many a good story not yet told on these virtual pages, has passed on to a new owner.

And then traded it in for this….

And so we move on to the second mourning period of the day, mourning the death of a youthful soul now relegated to a world of cushy, plushy, slush-box-y, pre-2000’s Mercedes benz products.

A moment of silence, please…

Alright, the bits over.

So this is an outwardly odd trade, what’s my buddy getting in exchange aside from more room? Well, how about a driving car! Oh yeah, luxury living baby!

Y’all know when your parents tell you “I’d you have nothing good to say, then don’t say anything at all”? It’s fairly good advice, however, it doesn’t make for good “comedy” writing. So let’s start with the good: it rides like an old Mercedes.

Now let’s get to the bad: it drives like a worn old Mercedes.

Like the fleet of 80’s Mercedes Benzes that fellow MSIMA writer Pierce and I have driven (and will eventually get to publishing), it rides very nicely. The seats are plush, the suspension is compliant to put it nicely, and the car moves with an uncaring urgency. It’s not like riding a sofa, but it is in that direction.

But is any of that a surprise? It’s the three pointed star back when luxury didn’t mean screens and massage seats. Instead it rides like a foam pillow, distracts you with wood surfaces, and shouldn’t kill you in an accident!

This Merc looks like someone’s Mom’s wagon from 1988. Hell I think my grandma had one do these back in the day. Smoke silver on parchment and all. It’s a large lump of a car, looking like an old E class is ready to birth another 190e. Like, look at this:

It’s not particularly flattering. It’s more like a pregnant whale, and kinda drives like it too. And the two-tone paint of “old man tan” mixed with “depressed vision gray” makes for a car that’ll almost make me feel bad for wanting to rag on this thing. Almost. Like it’s clearly past its prime, just let it die gracefully. Or at least give it some LSD and a fun night out on town.

Pregnant looks aside, this old e class in wagon form is a pretty practical car. And it better damn be. The trunk has enough space to store all the micro-nations in Europe, then fold up two extra seats to make this thing a 7-seater. Eat your heart out Chevy Traverse. However, there is no head room back there, and anyone over, say 5ft will have to assume the ‘ol “duck and cover” position for most of the ride. Which they’ll probably need, because I don’t want to know what happens to little Timmy and Jimmy back there during a rear end accident.

The rest of the car is spacious. This is a luxury car still. There’s good leg room, etc etc. Its an old Merc, from the fleeting days of when their motto of “Engineered like nothing else” actually held weight. The AC blows strong when it works, seats are power adjusted to an almost annoying degree, and it smells like crayons in here. Gotta love old cars.

The cabin is a sea of tan and wood, which is the only way to truly ease into “yer gol’en ‘ears”. I feel like I’ve aged four decades by just sitting here, like I’ve become a decrepit old fart. Lots of old dudes I know would look at this and want literally any other spec (or any other car). And yet sitting in the pregnant beluga whale, I feel like I should be listening to exclusively 40’s music, asking my kids to repeat every other sentence, and shaking my head at the death of physical media when I pass a digital billboard on my way to church.

Cars make you feel things right? A Bentley makes you feel better than a million bucks, a GMC gives you the confidence to hop curbs parking at Home Depot as the contractor king, a Miata makes you feel carefree and young(er)… you get the picture. This car doesn’t make me feel like the godfather or an 80’s CEO like in a w126 (promise I’ll review all 6 of his). Nor like an hot shot business upstart with a racing fixation in the e30 this replaced. It just makes me feel like I’ve finally resigned from the indignity of living and want to just get somewhere. It’s not a car to go numb in, but it may make you depressed that you’ve out lived your family.

Like, I have no need for modern conveniences, please play oldies and comfort me in plush tan leather. Change is scary now, and I have all my net worth in physical assets. Well played, retired doctor, I bet that car matches the paint in your office.

You know, I drove a 5 series from around the same year, and while it too was an inline 6, tan leather cladded car, at least it made me feel like I was having several affairs with people from work, while also giving off the notion that I probably have something faster at home. It was also a stick, so take from that what you will. What it didn’t make me feel, was lifeless.

Anyways, how does this thing drive?

Spoiler: fucking hilariously!

This poor car was far from mechanically perfect. After that drive, the owner had addressed a few of these issues, but:

A. I haven’t driven it with said changes.

B. Where’s the fun in that?

So let’s start with the issues, from most to least severe as they were encountered.

You turn the car on, and the radio has a fit, because at the time, the aftermarket head unit likes to do this funny little thing of playing random noise, beeping constantly, and/or spazzing out whenever you pressed a button or adjusted volume. So with that unusable, we set off into the hot Florida summer. You can feel that the bushings in the suspension are a bit past their prime, as it slowly wanders down the road, with imperfections turning this car into an a lesson in wave mechanics for a bit. Then, you go to turn, expecting very assured but fairly direct steering from an 80’s German car, only to find that there is lag in your inputs. YEP. Me neither.

When you turn in, there is a noticeable delay between you turning the wheel and the car actually turning. So then you give it more steering angle, but by that point the car is turning in like you asked it to before, so then you feel this and go to center the wheel. But wait, the car is still going left. So you correct right, only for you to feel the car now centered, so you correct again… and again… it’s one thing to have talkative steering, where your hands are constantly moving just a little bit. It’s another to have sloppy slosh in your hands that lags behind what you do in hand dance that usually causes aircraft to crash (something something pilot induced oscillations). And that’s not the worst of it!

Oooooh no, so you’ve finally straightened this car out, and you go to give it gas. And nothing happens. When you hit kick down switch, the car should downshift, maybe with a second or two of a delay. Not here! It just waits with you for a while before getting on with it. At which point, it it hasn’t already done so, the tach will go right up towards redline as the inline six shouts in wheezes in anger. Oh, you don’t move anywhere though. All they noise is purely due to the automatic transmission’s slow and slippery march towards the great beyond.

Then finally, the icing on the cake, we pull in to park, and the temperature gauge is pegged near the the top. But coolant isn’t boiling, hell the coolant system seems fine. But the electronic fans aren’t spinning. So… that’s fun!

Want some specs to go with the bs I’ve been spewing? Alright, it’s a “heavier than 3485 lbs” wagon with a 3.0L inline six petrol motor. It once made 216.999 hp and 229.01415926535 lb-ft of torque! And it went 0-60 in a whopping 8.2s! It uh… *checks C&D* has a shorter final drive than the sedan, has load leveling hydraulic shocks (ok kinda cool), and sold new for a bit over 147,631.006 current Tunisian Dinars, not accounting for 2024 inflation. Not the cheapest, but I figured this information is good for those time travelers who want buy the wag new.

And that’s it really.

At the time, the car was far from perfect. You presumably read the review so far. But the underpinnings of a sturdy steed lurk within the tired sheet metal and leather. The kind of brown brick that forged a reputation in comfort and dependability. It’s quiet, soft, and also trying to reassure you that despite the worn rubber, ailing transmission, and spastic electronics, that it will still make it. The underpinnings of a far better time lurk buried beneath 32 years of lard-arsed Florida commuting. Maybe, with enough new parts thrown at it, a lot more vacuuming, and potentially a small sprinkle of aftermarket magic, grandpa E-class will rise from his captains chair once again.