I am usually on the lookout for cars and trucks and trucks with ridiculously higher ultimate odometer readings when I am scouring the vehicle graveyards for fascinating bits of automotive history. Creating this endeavor complicated is the five-digit odometers utilized by just about all makers prior to the 1980s and the digital-exhibit odometers you’ll discover in most 21st-century devices, but I know in which to search if I want to see a lot more than 400,000 miles on the clock: Mercedes-Benzes. This is a 1985 W126 S-Course in California with the next-highest final mileage figure I have ever found on a discarded Mercedes-Benz.

Yes, at its typical charge of just around 1,220 miles of driving just about every month, this auto would have reached the magical 600,000-mile mark in a mere 23 a lot more months on the street. I have noticed only just one junkyard Mercedes-Benz that confirmed better than 600k miles on the clock: a gasoline-fueled W201 C-Course with a guide transmission, also in the San Francisco Bay Place. A mid-apocalyptic Colorado diesel W126— a 1985 300SD, just like present day car— experienced 535,971 miles when its profession ended. Immediately after that, my other high-mile junkyard report-holders consist of a 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo wagon with 493,549 miles, a 1983 Honda Accord sedan with 411,794 miles, and a 1988 Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon with 411,344 miles. I have observed a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit Cabrio demonstrating 930,013 miles, but I suspect a defective odometer in that case (partly because Mk1 Golfs normally didn’t maintain together so perfectly and partly due to the fact you’d have to be ridiculous to travel a convertible 26,500 miles per yr in the Colorado Large Plains area).

I think this car or truck bought crashed, but the hood hurt seems extra common of what you get when impatient junkyard personnel need to get a trapped hood latch open in get to drain the fluids. Then junkyard customers tore apart the front bodywork in get to tear the engine out swiftly.

Which brings up the problem: Who needs to buy a fifty percent-million-mile engine? The famous OM617 5-cylinder turbodiesel could be the hardest automobile engine ever developed, but it really is effortless enough to uncover a single in a U-Wrench lawn with a just-getting-damaged-in 379,000 or so miles. If you’re individual, you can get a person that in no way even hit 220,000 miles!

We can experience confident that the operator or proprietors of this motor vehicle didn’t dial this selection normally.

The interior looked good when the motor vehicle obtained here, while you can see the carpet grime from 10,000 or so hrs of contact with driver toes.

MB-Tex faux-leather is arms-down the toughest upholstery material at any time mounted in a motor car. I have noticed a lot of this stuff wanting excellent in previous Mercedes-Benzes that were still left sitting down outdoors with the home windows down for a long time. Someday I am likely to slice all the MB-Tex out of a 1980s W126 and get a jacket designed from it.

Most People who purchased the W126 S-Course went for the massive, imply V8 gasoline engine, which was a wonderful piece of engineering that would haul these huge beasts at Autobahn speeds for hour after hour… but if you could are living with just 123 horsepower in a 3,730-pound motor vehicle in 1985, the 300SD was the much better expense.

In 1985, American S-Course sedan customers could purchase the top-of-the-line 500SEL with the 184-horse, 5.-liter V8. That car or truck commenced at $51,200 (about $126,150 in 2020 bucks). The 300SD went for the low, low price of $39,500, which comes to about $97,300 currently.

Now its times on the highway are performed.