My 1990 Mercedes-Benz 300D — The Long Road To Independence

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– Posted on January 29, 2025

Courtesy of Bring a Trailer

Finally, My Own Car

It was 2006 and I needed to find a reliable car that was good on gas for $3,500. 

At the time, I could already feel the rumblings of a faltering economy in NYC, so I decided to join a friend in Houston where the economy seemed to be steady if not booming. I was determined to stand on my own two feet. After barely scraping by for a few years (see: Great Recession) I landed a government job just long enough to be able to buy a house, but after 2 short years the Great Recession came for that too. 

Houston didn’t appear to be hit until later in the Great Recession and not as drastically. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons & Bottom Picture courtesy of Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

I quickly got a new job, but I would need a new car as neither of the ones my partner had would work: 

5 minutes after I said “No ma’am” to a hooker passing by this van, I threw our practically new car into a ditch. But that’s a story for another time…

 

I forget who put the bug in my ear about the W124 but that’s what I went out looking for. Out in Humble, we found a black 1990 Mercedes-Benz 300D with a 2.5L Turbo Diesel.  

The car was sluggish (more so than it should have been), the cruise control didn’t work (typical for these) and the rear driver’s side window didn’t work. I got them to take $3,000.  It was the first time I ever purchased and owned a car completely on my own. This car would see me through to finally, fully supporting myself.

Go, Hedwig, Go

We made a beeline for our mechanic to get it sorted and once we got there he was not impressed.

Image courtesy of Bring a Trailer.

 

It needed about a thousand dollars worth of work. The one thing that I can clearly remember is that the fuel system needed to be purged and the tank cleaned of algae. I couldn’t afford that yet. While this car would be THE one that I would finally be able to work on and repair on my own, the estimate was out of my league.  

I drove it, unrepaired, until I could save up.  I dubbed it Hedwig because it was German (well West German if you saw the parts stampings) and for Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  

Hedwig was so painfully slow with how choked up the fuel system was, it took me far longer than the estimated 12-13 seconds to reach 60, but I did enjoy occasionally flooring it and sooting out some tailgater’s view for a moment.  

Houston Traffic is its Own Kind of Hell Image from Houston Public Media.

 

Driving Houston’s flying overpasses was great fun; I could keep the speed up – or increase it – while turning in and the car planted itself.  Hedwig was ready, he wanted to play but he wouldn’t go crazy.  I’d never driven a car that was so planted.  

I got pretty good at spotting which gas stations had diesel & explaining to people “no, there’s nothing wrong with the valves, it’s a diesel.”  Friends loved the smell of the interior and laughed at its odd eccentric, single windshield wiper. They marveled over the fact that it had just shy of 300,000 miles on it and it got over 30MPG. This made me realize why these were (and still are) so revered. 

Launch Attempt 1

My job was going well. My car was humming along. The commute sucked but things were stable.  So what did I do?

I broke up with my partner. 

I had been waiting a long time to get financially stable enough to do it.  Now that I was able to afford everything, I decided to end things.  

It took me about 2-3 weeks to get so depressed about being alone in that house that I went and adopted a cat. He’s still the best thing I brought with me from TX, all around the country, and he’s still alive.

First night at home, exhausted after chasing paper balls around the house.

A Flop

A few weeks later I got a call from my agent on the way home, she had a very strange tone, asking me if I yelled at someone far above my paygrade. I did not. My agency believed me, but that didn’t matter. I was to never return to my office, just like that. I’ve cocked up a lot in my career due to my autistic inability to read human behavior or nuance, but this is one time I am confident I was in the right. 

But that was it, that’s the life of a temp. I went home, sat in the tub with a huge glass of bourbon, a copy of Hemmings Classic Car and my cat, perched on the ledge staring at me.

What Now?

Then, like now, my cat didn’t think much of my writing.

 

I wasn’t sure how long I could carry myself on savings, so I began selling off everything I owned and didn’t absolutely need. Hedwig and I then went on an endless series of bad dates – to save money on meals, for basic companionship or both. It was a very dark time in my life and one where I contemplated if I should even go on.  That’s when Hedwig broke. 

I woke up one morning to a puddle of coolant in the garage. 

The radiator had a crack and the fan clutches were busted.  I seriously contemplated throwing in the towel on everything. The only reason I didn’t was because I worried what would happen to my cat – so I carried on. 

Mortified, I asked my parents for some money to make the repair. They offered to give me even more money to float me a bit, and instead, I asked if they’d be willing to pay for a plane ticket back to NJ to see if maybe it was time to come home.

Tail Between My Legs

Hedwig got fixed and my parents agreed to the plan. Two things happened during that trip: 

  1. I decided it was time to return home.
  2. I reconnected with a friend who would later become my husband.

Shamed and with my tail between my legs, I moved right back into my childhood bedroom.

Hedwig was packed up with everything I couldn’t sell or donate.  The cat and I landed in Philadelphia on August 23rd 2011, the same day that the strongest earthquake to hit the East Coast since WWII hit. Three days later Hurricane Irene hit and Hedwig went missing. 

That’s when the shipper called me, I didn’t exactly take it well.  

“How do you lose a car! IT’S ON A TRUCK! IT DOESN’T JUST DISAPPEAR!” I loved that car, and all of my possessions in it.

“Well… we haven’t been able to get in touch with the driver for over a day.  But don’t worry! It’s probably just the hurricane and he’s pulled in somewhere to be safe!”

Hedwig did arrive. Why they felt the need to call me I’m still not sure.

Welcome Home, Friend!

Reclaiming Independence, With A Wrench

After a few days I began to notice some new issues.  

The rear shocks were groaning, the driver’s side window decided to stop operating, I was missing a front turn signal and the windshield washer reservoir was leaking and oh, he was due for an oil change.

I was determined that now I would take care of all of this on my own. Well that, and I had maybe a few hundred bucks left to my name. I had to do it on my own.

When my father saw what was going on his tone was decidedly different than with my first car. 

“Need any tools, son?”

“Ah, yeah.” I said, laying everything out around the car. 

“You know where they are, put ’em back where you found ’em.” He looked down the length of his cigar. I looked over at his citron colored 1972 MG Midget and back over at him. 

The car I re-learned to drive stick on, it never left the garage much, though.

 

“You wanna help?” 

He just laughed, sitting on the bumper of my mother’s car as I got to work.  The windshield wiper reservoir was cracked, I wasn’t prepared for that. 

“Oh, hang on.” My father rummaged around, balancing his cigar carefully on a vice grip as he searched.  “Here, use this!” He handed me a tube of clear silicone sealant.  

And I fixed it, as easy as that. This was the most my father and I had ever worked on a car, something I desperately wanted when I was a teenager – the happiness I felt is difficult to explain. 

An Afternoon with My Father

I began to look through the pages I printed out from the shop manual for an oil change when my dad chimed in again. 

“You don’t need that. Here, jack up the car up front.” He dragged out a portable car jack from in front of his MG, showing me where to put it and tossing some wheel chocks at me. He proceeded to talk me through exactly what I needed to do then handed me a container for the oil.

“How much oil does it take?”

“7 quarts.”

“SEVEN?!” 

Only later when I purchased my 1955 Packard and its 5.8L V8 only held FIVE did I realize just how much oil this 2.5L diesel took. 

Dad sat there as I finished the oil change. After the oil was done it was on to the rear shocks – which again blew my mind with how easy and fast the work was. Last was replacing the window regulator.  

This was the only time my father did actually put his hands on the car. I needed someone to hold up the window as I finished up. It was a nice feeling of him holding me up so I could succeed. 

I enjoyed my work – briefly – and then had a date in Philadelphia that I’d been waiting for since 2001. I wasn’t about to miss it.

The Most Important Date of My Life

I rolled up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to meet someone I’d known for 10 years for our first date and it had to be cheap, I still didn’t have a job. We spent the day around Philly.

One of the paintings we saw. The title is “Woman taken in Adultery”. We wondered why they just didn’t call it “Whore.”

 

Night came and it was time for us to part and so we did.  Soon we started spending every weekend together. Hedwig made each and every long trip to Cape May without a single fault. Honestly, I began to take Hedwig for granted because he did his job too well. 

One day my future mother-in-law said “I always know when you’re here, I can hear that car like a bus coming up the driveway!”

It was all in good jest. 

Day in and day out Hedwig just kept going. 

I needed to move out and on my own. The promise to my parents was I wouldn’t stay any longer than 6 months, here I was in month 2 and still no job.  I considered getting certified to teach English as a second language and joining a friend in Italy who had done the same.

Then my agency called me. The NJ office said they had an interview lined up for me and it was with a company I’d been desperately trying to join for years.

Rising from the Ashes

To be brief, I got the job and it was more money than I had ever made. All of a sudden it was as if everything started falling into place.  

I was in a relationship with someone who wanted me even when I was dead broke with no job & I just landed a job at a company I admired.  It was finally my time. I commuted a few months with Hedwig from my parent’s place and shortly before I moved out into my own apartment in January of 2012, I let him go. 

This was in TX, he had closer to 400,000 miles  +/- on him when I let him go.

 

Persuaded by others and the lack of cruise control, it was a decision I immediately regretted. Not because his replacement was a bad car but because that car was my first real step in being a self sufficient adult, and I did it dirty. He literally carried me through my failures in Houston all the way to the precipice of real adulthood, and I just let him go. I still look for him, but I lost his VIN long ago so that’s a losing battle. 

Ah well…on to the next chapter.  My 1955 Packard Patrician. 

My 1955 Packard Patrician, my dream car