The W123 Mercedes-Benz was such an all-points-of-the-compass durability legend that nothing would have been able to top it, but its W124 successor came as close as could be expected. The W124 station wagon sold well, especially in California; here’s a high-miles ’89 in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard.
I hear Mercedes-Benz fanatics talk about the incredible resale value of any W124 wagon being so high — due to the burning need of said fanatics to own a half-dozen examples apiece, presumably — that they never show up in wrecking yards, but I do see them from time to time. This one still has a good-enough interior and no obvious crash damage, but here it is.
Passing California’s draconian emissions test, required every two years, is extremely tough for 1980s cars. Perhaps this one failed its last test and the cost to get it to run sufficiently clean was more than warranted for a 311,428-mile German wagon. That’s more than 10,000 miles every year, since it was new.
The seats are covered with MB-Tex, Mercedes-Benz’s immortal fabric. You could put these seats on the surface of Mercury for a few decades, then hit them with a weed-whacker … and they’d still look good.
As is proper for a Mercedes-Benz wagon of its time, power came from a 177-horsepower straight-six engine.
“Engineered like no other car in the world.”
