That’s a fine piece of pressure treated lumber securely strapped to this Mercedes S Class. So secure it’s actually bowing.
It even has rear tie-down points inside the cabin! And it’s a TurboDiesel, just like a PowerStroke F250, albeit with a little less power with 123hp@4,350 rpm and 184lb-ft of torque@2,400 rpm in its ultimate 1985 form from its 3.0 liter inline five. And although it weighs a bit under half the weight of the 2021 F250 PowerStroke TurboDiesel V8 at just 3,571 pounds (dare I say svelte?), it’s still a little shy in the overall power to weight ratio, but it is at least 36 years old so that’s a lot of progress that’s taken place in the meantime. And it’s the short wheelbase so not quite the rear legroom of the King Ranch Crew Cab but probably just as comfortable and with better handling. If a little drafty from the rear, perhaps.
“Love the new Mercedes, Bob. But isn’t that strip of genuine Zebrano wood supposed to go inside on the dashboard?”
“What, where nobody can see it? Bah!”
Ted always wanted a Mercury Breezeway sedan. For his birthday his wife surprised him with this Mercedes Breezeway sedan. It’s the thought that counts.
Margie figured 300 was better than 250 and it was still a Super Duty given the SD in the name. So she surprised Fred on his birthday.
On a serious note, this is timely. While there wasn’t time for a picture I was stopped at a signal earlier this week when a Ford Ecosport rolled up beside me. There were two 2×8 boards resting on the dashboard, extending through the cabin, with the rear of the boards cantilevered out the rear and tied to the open tailgate. That’s determination.
If only he had some sort of vehicle designed for carrying bulky items…
If you were going to break the window to get those tie downs in I would have just put the passenger seat back and stuck the wood in through the back window. 🙂
Very Good.
Of course, I’ll credit the readership of this site with enough savvy to know….there are some trucks that are bought and used for their utility….but a huge number are only bought for reasons that psychoanalysts and marketing men can best explain.
But Hey, Ford, GM and Chrysler won’t complain. it’s probably realistic to say – if consumers only ever bought the truck capacity they had a practical need for…. all three of the Detroit automakers would have gone bankrupt long ago… The fantasy-wish-fulfillment market is so lucrative.
Still..it’s a free country and I guess it could be considered “victimless crime”. The guy who buys the full size, 4×4, top-engine-option, top tow-rating truck to drive from his fully paved subdivision, on fully paved roads to his office job, and take the kids to the drive-through, or pick up that couple of bags of weed-n-feed from Home Depot? not harming anyone really… helping the economy you could say, though not helping the environment.
That’s hardly endemic to trucks, though.
Only people who own a Mercedes can afford lumber right now.
Yes, that!
Of all possible captions, this one’a my fave!
I caught this one at the local big blue box store. Motorists down the road complained of being side piped.
One day at the home improvement big box store, I actually watched a woman load lumber into her car like that. Six Eight-foot lengths of Doug Fir 2×4, through open windows. Maybe she was friends with the owner of our featured car, because her car was a Mercedes, too! But, a recent model.
To reduce overall width, she tried to run the lumber diagonally out the right front and left rear windows. The front passenger head restraint got in the way. So she then tried it sideways in the rear. She must have come to her senses because she took it all out and made a phone call. Probably had a friend or neighbor with a Stinkin’ F-250 King Ranch PowerStroke Diesel. Or maybe a little Chrysler PT Cruiser, which could have swallowed it, and the liftgate would even have closed.
Or, go back inside and rent one of their pickups for $29.95.
Or a standard station wagon or whatever they used to call those long forgotten vehicles. If I can use a station wagon to haul an FE engine block then it can haul some lumber.
I used to haul eight-foot lengths of 2×4 in my 4th gen Camaro. Lay down the back seat, fully recline the front passenger seat, and they fully fit within the car. I laid a mat on the front passenger seat to protect the upholstery.
When I was a young man I drove and old man’s car – a 20 year old 1972 Pontiac Grand Ville. Not really beater status, but I did visit the box stores with it, and once brought home a 25′ extension ladder on the roof, with ropes tied to each bumper corner. And, a blanket protecting the roof.
Criticize longer, lower, and wider all you want, but that roof had awesome cargo capacity!
“once brought home a 25′ extension ladder on the roof”
Haha, I did the same thing when I bought an 8 foot wooden stepladder and had to get it home with a 66 Fury III sedan.
Frank realized that he had been tragically imprecise when he had promised to pay an extra $5k for any Mercedes turbodiesel with a stick.
In the F-250s favor, at least its rear window will slide closed.
Funny thing about that stick, it came out of the bunk that way –
»chef’s kiss«
(because “Collector Vehicle” licence plate)
Hope the ventilation fan is set on full blast, otherwise the cabin is likely filled with diesel exhaust “scent” at any speed higher than 5 mph.
As the owner of a same vintage MB – S class (equipped with original and non overhauled gas engine, rolling up over 532,000 one owner miles) this lumber wagon photo gives me great pain )-;
I saw a mate’s Father drive with a 20foot ladder tied to under his 67 Falcon .. in the days when bumpers were chrome and fixed with metal lugs that welcomed ropes guided into that clever space to the body. He said he drove slowly….
Last year I saw a Fox Mustang coupe with a couple of suitcases and a duffle bag tied loosely on top of the deck lid.I suppose that it was the one time that the optional luggage rack could have been used. Back when we bought our first house I tied a couple of 6′ trellis and a sheet of wood lath to the side of my ’75 Civic coupe. Made it back from the hardware store without incident. I have a long bed truck for those tasks now.
Yes they dont go very well thise old Benz diesels 13 more hp but less torque than my 1997cc Citroen in a heavier car, usually youd pull a trailer for loads of timber or at least use a roof rack but its an old Mercedes so structural integrity is good.
At first, Karl had tried repairing the rusted chassis with newer frame rails. But they too tore out as much of the floor panels, previously covered in coal tar to fight corrosion, gave up the good fight and the rails fell off at the first sign of a washboard road surface.
Karl then harked back to an even more classic architectural reference point. By using laminated dimensional lumber (LDL), he hand-crafted flying buttresses that, rather than attaching underneath the car, were designed to support the frame from above.
Ultimately Karl added additional bracing from the ends of the LDL to boot and bonnet, increasing the structural rigidity of the car by another 15%. Unfortunately no photos exist of these final tweaks, as Karl’s vision was partially obstructed by the bracing, and the car sailed over a bridge embankment, collapsing through the tanks of a nearby waste treatment facility.
Years ago I needed to get 27 pieces of 2X4 back to a friend’s house, but my truck was parked at home in another state. My friend had a tiny Honda, so I opened the trunk of my 08 Camry, folded both the rear seat sections, and managed to get all 27 of those boards into the car, plus a couple of shopping cars full of other building materials packed in the trunk and back seat area. Was even able to close the trunk lid, and the back window is still intact!
When we bought the Camry brand new, the salesman realized I was driving a big truck and told me to never underestimate how much stull I could load into the Camry. That car still amazes me today at all the crap I can stick into and onto it. I’m expecting to turn the odometer numbers to 250,000 in a couple of weeks, and only recently had to spend money on repairs [except for brake pads & tires].
Poor old thing .
W126’s were incredibly stout cars, sadly many are now like this – only waiting the next $200 repair to be scrapped .
-Nate
They are incredibly over-built. While scavenging suspension parts from my ‘83 126, my jack kept sinking into the soft grass making the prospect of being trapped under it when the jack stands inevitably subsided a strong possibility. My friend whose farm I stored it at suggested he flip it over with the forks on his tractor. When he did, not only did the windows >not< break, the doors opened & closed without hinderance. As my previous cars had been air-cooled VWs & ‘80s Subarus,I was quite impressed.
My favorite illustration of level of forethought ( and German engineer-thinking ) is the method of removing the starter. On 123s & 126s it’s pretty tight in there what with the massive downpipe and the diagonal guide-bars. I forget the exact details, but the removal involved a 2’ extension, then u-joint, then 6” extension to get the socket to the lower starter bolt. You then turned the front wheels full lock one direction, pulled the starter back, rotated it in 2 planes, turned front wheels other way, and magically had room to drop it out via a nice notch in the front subframe.
I also have to mention how well they do in the snow with decent tires. I used to love surprising our rural rednecks by coming at their lifted F250 slideways in my lowered 123 wagon.
Enough. Thanks for the memory-prompt!
Yes, they’re stout and very safe in collisions ~ I once salvaged a turbocharger from a 1985 W126 300SD that had been it whilst parked, by a Semi ~ the back of the car was stove in to -just- behind the back glass, it wasn’t shattered, all four doors opened and closed and amazingly there was NO BLOOD in the wreck .
I’ve tried several different methods of removing the OM616 / 617 starter , some were very simple, all required multiple twists to get the darn thing out of there after unbolting .
It reminds me of older Ford ‘Y block’ V8 starters, those were a bear to get if they still had all three bolts and in those gas station days we did fair amount of starter replacements on the gas island with the car blistering hot .
Also Little British Cars from the 1950’s and 1960’s ~ Peter Egan (IIRC) once said somethoing like ‘when it lands on your nose, polite applause, you won’ .
-Nate
Not much to add here, except that, as usual, I like the sealed beam front end better than the later ones with composite headlamps… It just has more character to my eyes, never mind the now chalky plastic bits used to accommodate them.
Amen, hallelujah, preach on.
(the front end is the same; the sealed beam, US composite, and European composite headlamp fixtures are all drop-interchangeable.)
That was mighty kind of ’em! It’s also nice to have those options available when factory composites become obsolete… or if they just didn’t perform well in the first place. And having legitimate LED upgrades readily available is icing on the cake. Will put out a guess that the earlier DOT composites on these cars may not have been all they could be, what with being hamstrung by a 9004 burner?
Come to think of it, it appears that many European manufacturers made an effort to accommodate US market lighting without sheetmetal modifications. One car that I don’t think I could digest, though, is a Citroën SM with the four round lamps as fitted in our market.
Many European cars from ’86 to ’96ish got US-market composite headlamps much lousier than they could have been. A lot of them used the 9004 bulb, Ford’s “Better Idea” for 1983 with design priorities being cheap, cheap, and cheap. At least to some degree, it’s probably because the Germans have long made something of a cultural speciality of schadenfreude; they might well have taken a look at the American headlamp specs written by Ford and rubber-stamped by NHTSA, and said “Wait, that’s all we have to do/spend to have a legal lamp? Okeh, if the Americans want this junk, fine, they can have it!”.
To be fair, though, the H4 lamps on the European-market versions of these cars often weren’t better, just differently lousy. H4 was state of the art in 1969, and the only reason why Mercedes and Audi and Saab and Volvo were still putting it on expensive cars in 1990 (or 1986!) was because the regs said they could: cheap ‘n’ legal, just like the American junk! Back then, BMW and Citroën were headlamp technology leaders, way out in front of the other European brands.
As to the crimes committed by the US Government against Citroën…these are best not spoken of.
I had a ’85 SAAB 900 Turbo SPG with a hatchback, and was amazed at what it would swallow but, I was out done by a friend when he was moving across town. He rented a refrigerator dolly, loaded up his full size refrigerator and bungee corded it (inclined) to the. back of his 900 Z1 Kawasaki, and headed across town. Made it with out incident, unloaded, and returned the dolly with the wheels considerablly worse for wear.