Roshake77, who posted this at the Cohort, said very explicitly that this is a “1978 Mercedes 200D With 240D Badge”. Since he also pegged the exact year, he undoubtedly decoded the tag in order to know that. So we’re left wondering why would put a 240D badge on a 200D. To impress us with the deception that it has 65 hp instead of 55?
Or the fact that a 240D can do 0-60 in about 24 seconds instead of the 31 seconds a 200D takes. No, most likely it’s because a 240D has a top speed of 86 mph instead of 81 mph.
Maybe there’s a more modest explanation.
Of course! And it was probably done by the first owner right after the purchase.
The 240D was the AMG of the derv cars before the 300turb Ds.lOL….
Remember only seeing 200D as Berlin taxis were speed is not required….
I’d be more impressed with the 200D badge, as 240D’s are common as dirt in the US.
Didnt need to look at the tag, i just looked it up in the national registry by its license plate. Its a useful tool for finding out the model years of my finds amongst other things, even revealing impostors like this sometimes 🙂
By “tag”, I meant the license plate. They’re commonly referred to as “tags” in the US.
Ooh ok thanks for clearing that up
Mostly in the proverbial South. Most of the country refers to “tags” as the annual sticker that goes on the license plate. I don’t know what term the South uses to describe the annual sticker.
“Tabs” is a fairly common term for the renewal stickers.
Fair enough, but are clerical errors possible?
I dont think thats the case here, in part because the engine size is listed as 2 litres, and also theres a note about the information in the cars documentation not matching the markings on the car.
Mr. Roshake…..I see you are in Hungary. I’m a Canada expat living in Velence. I arrived in February.Where are you? In Budapest, I’d imagine.
Yeah I live in Budapest, but me and my family sometimes go down to Velencei Lake. In fact I found and shot this particular benz at one of our stays there in Gárdony 🙂
Some years ago I saw a 200D with European headlights in Seattle. I’d love to know how it got here. This was before CC, and I didn’t have a camera on me.
Does Hungary use the letters Ö, Ő, Ü, and Ű on license plates?
It was easy to import foreign-spec vehicles to the US before the laws were toughened and their teeth sharpened around 1989. Then it became very difficult to import a foreign-spec vehicle newer than 25 years old, but vehicles older than that can be brought right in (and newer-than-that vehicles have found their way in).
Right, I see what you’re getting at. I wasn’t clear in my question. I meant, why would someone go to the trouble of importing the car when there are plenty of 240D’s already in the US?
Well, as they say, every car has a story. Perhaps it was a family car or otherwise had memories attached.
Nah, no letters with those dots or lines above them are used on plates
Considering the performance, the license plate beginning with the letters “CPR” is amusing.
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Just because this is a cheap Mercedes doesn’t mean it is immune from the kind of crazies who put “Type R” badges on their low line Honda Civics, along with big spoilers and fart can exhaust tips. They all make the car go f̶a̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ less slow, you know!!!! And those youth can’t help but get older! 🙂
Salvage yard trunk lid?
That’s what I thought.
I would do a little cutting and gluing and make it a 420D just to annoy all the other Mercedes drivers.
Good idea. Just beware of those Jaguars that say 420G.
I’m going to need for Stern to come and de-code the headlights. Something about the four round shapes in the two squares looks like US market to me. No fender repeaters, either. Could the registration be wrong?
55 hp in a car like that doesn’t sound fun to me.
Those are the early-type European headlamps: round H4 high/low beam and H3 fog lamp reflectors behind a large rectangular common lens. The front turn signals and the taillights are also European-spec items (no side retro-reflector; no side marker light).
Maybe while debadging they broke the badge and found a couple of holes and instead filling them in, just got another badge instead.
The slowest car I have ever driven was a well used 220D with the herkey-jerky four speed auto, a devilish device. A 300D actually went pretty well but the 220D was downright dangerous in my opinion.
The 200D would probably suffice for taxi duty in German cities.
Haha. Living in southern California (LA area), I have certainly seen my share of “shaved” cars in the past 12 years. To me there’s nothing funnier than when some wanna-be buys the cheapest MB or BMW and then removes all the badges (shaves) other than the main emblem in order to impress others. I literally overheard a guy telling someone that his Benz was an E-class when it was painfully obvious that it was the lowest level C.
Vanity at it’s best.
Well if they really wanted to impress others should of gotten a 300D Turbo badge Personally I do it because it just looks better to me.
Removing the poverty grade badges from BMWs used to be a thing and adding a M badge available over the counter to impress nobody was also popular, so a little badge engineering on an old Benz not a surprise.
I added the Ace badge to my Daewoo Prince 23 years ago. Cost a dollar at the Daewoo parts store in Daegu. The Ace was a step up from the base model and below the Super Salon Brougham, which had a lot more, and difficult to duplicate, visual differentiation.
My first year in university, a few of us on a dormwide trip to the mountains peeled the “Triton V10” badges off a university-owned Ford 15-passenger van and stuck them onto the fenders of the RA’s Festiva. One of us might’ve also snuck under the Festiva and crammed half a pack’s worth of hot dogs between the catalytic converter and its heat shield, but that was a long time ago and so I’m sure I don’t remember which one of us it might’ve been.
Yeah, saw some of that silliness as well. In the early 80s in college, one of the students, who looked like the consummate “Disco Tony” type, drove a late 1970s Trans Am. It was otherwise a decent looking car ( though it was most likely had the Old 403 and auto trans )
He had affixed ( stuck/glued on ) a Buick “3.8 Litre Turbo” badge from a late 70’s Regal right next to the Trans Am decal on the back side of the rear spoiler on the deck lid. It looked tacky and tacked on…all the more so since the badge fat surface area was too large to fit without it protruding either down past the edge of the deck lid bottom, or the top edge of the spoiler; so it sat in the concave area created by the rear surface of the spoiler. leaving a noticeable gap.
Funny – if this were a US built Dodge, the whole discussion would have been about drugs in assembly plants.
As much as I love these cars (the W123 series) the 200 & 240’s are indeed painfully slow and can be dangerous when merging into freeway traffic .
-Nate