Part of the family
THE ONLY PROBLEM with owning a classic Mercedes 123-series is that you get spoilt, taking its legendary reliability for granted. I bought my 240TD on 13 June 1990 and over the past 30 years I’ve driven it about 220,000km (137,000 miles – less than half of its total) without any mechanical breakdown. So, after taking it out for the first time after almost nine months of lockdown and winter storage, I was surprised that it malfunctioned.
The plan had been to ride out with a couple of friends to watch the sunrise. They were due to come over at 5.45am so, about half-an-hour beforehand, I started to wake up the car. I let some air out of the over-inflated tyres, checked the liquids, connected the battery and turned the key. The engine fired straightaway – but the fuel gauge read zero. Adding some diesel from a can made no difference and, after a few minutes of the engine running, the temperature gauge needle hadn’t moved either.
Something was wrong. And then my friends arrived.
You can’t postpone a sunrise so we left anyway. As we turned out of the front gate I noticed the indicators weren’t working. Even worse, the electric windows – left open during storage – wouldn’t go up. Despite the storm that resulted, we pressed on and arrived at our photo location 45 minutes later. Frozen!
Once we’d taken a few pictures and the light had improved, I opened the fusebox for probably the first time in 15 years and found a corroded fuse. Replacing it made no difference, and the others all looked fine, including the one that should have been the main suspect. However, after breakfast and another windy drive home, I found that fuse also had a disintegrating cap. A new one fixed everything.
It seems strange to write about such a trivial fault when other Octane contributors endure more significant problems, but owning a 123-series – especially a diesel – is usually uneventful. Not long ago I was asked why a slow, unexciting station wagon was taking up a spot in my garage. But to part with my 240TD would be
inconceivable. It was my first proper car and I’ve had some wonderful journeys in it.
When I used to go surfing at weekends and the budget didn’t stretch to food a hotel, I slept in it, and it was my only car for nearly ten years. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s transported my belongings to a new address; and this was the car that, on a foggy winter’s day, I chose to drive my newborn son home from the hospital – its most important journey ever.
The Mercedes is a member of our family and I feel properly at home when I’m driving it. Happy 30th anniversary!