IN THE 1980s AFRICA STARTED TO EXPERIENCE AN INFLUX OF SECOND HAND MERCEDES

“In the 1980s Africa started to experience an influx of second hand Mercedes cars,” says Flavien Neuvy, an economist specialising in the African automotive industry. “Moroccan taxi drivers simply started catching on to what cab owners in Europe had understood: diesel Mercedes were built to last.”

Mesfar’s Mercedes W114 Stroke 8 model was a game-changer for the Stuttgart-based manufacturer and 1.9 million rolled off the line during its eight years of production. Its successor, the W123, appeared in 1976 and even more were produced with 2.9 million of these cars being built in the nine years that followed.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s the average age of cars in Europe was shipped to emerging countries, with African nations being the favourite destination by far.

In 2000, more than 70 per cent of all cars imported into Morocco were more than five years old, including many old Mercedes, which have enjoyed incredible longevity thanks to their robust mechanics, simple maintenance requirements and an abundance of salvaged spare parts. It was estimated 35,000 W123 240Ds alone were still on Moroccan roads in 2011, more than 30 years after the last car rolled off production lines.

“Africa is a hotbed of mechanical resourcefulness,” says Neuvy. “Everything has a value, even if we’d deem it rubbish in Europe. When things break, people always find a way to fix them. Local taxi drivers

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