RE: Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 | The Brave Pill

[Jaroon]

I always had a soft spot for these and would like a project. I always play guess the asking price and imagine what I would pay if I found the right project.
My estimates came in at 50% less than what the seller wants. The unknown is the issue, can easily see this potentially running up another £8k to make it the car I'd want. I'm oot, miles oot but hope someone does the business with it.

[Augustus Windsock]

Eazy71 said:

I love these. My fantasy garage has a “touring car” section - one of these (ideally 2.5-16) lined up alongside an e30 M3 and a Sierra RS500 Cosworth...one day!

This one is unfortunately on life support and needs major surgery to bring it back...it’s about 10k too expensive. You can get one in decent nick for about for about 20k - so 13k for a dog is a tad unrealistic.

I don’t know if it makes me lucky but I’ve owned an E30 M3 (sold earlier this year) and a mint low-miles RS500.
Both very much of their era, a Fiesta ST would probably see them off to be fair but that’s not what they are about
I had been thinking of a 2.5-16 but there’s too many snotters out there and as said, parts aren’t easy to come by.
The Merc is the most stealthy, the RS500 least, but does that matter if they aren’t used as a daily? No of course not but I just wonder how many of the light-fingered brigade would notice the Merc whereas the RS or M3 would probably be had away in the blink of an eye....

[Mr Tidy]

A mate of mine had a manual 2.3 one of these back in 1991 and I had a drive in it.

Although it didn't feel particularly I liked it, but somehow having to rev the engine out to access some performance and a very stiff ride felt completely out of place in a Mercedes!

I hope it gets saved, but I don't think it's worth that price.

[GTRene]

or make something like this one, with V8 looks cool as well, me thinks.

[BFleming]

I owned a 190E 2.3-16. It sounds heroic, but the reality in 2004 was different. Let me explain.
I've always been in to cars. I know what an E30 M3 is. I even know what a 4 door E36 318iS in Dakar Yellow is. I certainly know what a 190E 2.3-16 is. So some Ebay browsing, and clicking of buttons & beer, saw me win a 1986 190E 2.3-16 on Ebay. The price... £1100. No digit missing, it really was £1100. That's what they were. That was a Saturday, and I was excited! I got in touch with the seller, who was Leicester way from memory. I lived in Kent, so not insurmountable. I paid via Paypal (all criticism fairly accepted) and I told him I'd probably collect it the following weekend. Then I fell down the stairs at home, breaking my foot at 7pm on the Monday night. By 2am on the Tuesday morning, with my foot in a temporary cast, it was obvious I wouldn't be collecting the car. The seller was spot-on, and offered to deliver the car for train fare home - £35. So he dropped it off the following weekend. A black metallic car, with full black leather. It was manual, by the way (not all were). So on crutches I did some work. The gearchange was sloppy, so I rebuilt the (beautifully engineered) selector mechanism on my dining room table, hobbling out to the car to remove it & reinstall it. Parts were cheap. One of the alloys was broken on that front lip, so I put a set of ok-looking CLK alloys on there. I sold the other 3 good genuine alloys for £300.
Remember at this stage, I had never driven the car due to my right foot being in plaster. But it was taxed, insured and MOT'd, and when a friend came to visit - a fellow petrolhead and a serving pursuit Police officer - I let him have a drive. Fantastic experience, with the tail end wide on every corner. About 400m from home, the clutch pedal went to the floor, so he nursed it home. I needed a new clutch thrust bearing it seems, and that's a gearbox out job. So not having driven it, I put it back on Ebay, and sold it - for £800. The next owner had 7 more years out of it, but it hasn't been on the road since 2011. The underside was well rusty in my short tenure, and the MOT history suggests that didn't improve, funnily enough. It's currently on SORN.
I have mixed memories of this car - it was lovely. Rusty, fragile, but lovely. But it's not a "I wish I still had it" car. I wish I'd driven though!

Edited by BFleming on Sunday 4th October 18:32

[humphra]

GTRene said:

or make something like this one, with V8 looks cool as well, me thinks.

That, too my eyes, would be a far better direction to take this (though I have my reservations about the current price tag!). I have a lot of respect for faithful restorations, but I think old Mercs take a bit of modding very well.

Edited by humphra on Saturday 3rd October 23:57

[Dapster]

silentbrown said:

I'd agree. and £20Kish will get you a nice one, in a much better colour.

https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/10539884?c...

You are being completely stuffed by the Clarkeson and press car tax on this one. This one sold last month for £20k which looks pretty sweet (as an aside, I've never seen sales pics to include shots of the car's first aid kit before!)

https://collectingcars.com/for-sale/1991-mercedes-...

[s m]

As the miles get lower, the values get higher




Plus, if you’d stashed your £50k Evo2 nearly 30 years back, driven it to the beach and back once a year, then......

[tiggyzak]

Gareth9702 said:

You need to see something very special in old Mercedes to make that worthwhile. Certainly requires bravery but to most observers there will be nothing to be seen except an old car.

MY younger brother died a few years ago with motor neurone disease. He loved cars. I remember him saying to me with a twinkle in his eye (it WAS a struggle for him)

"Paul ,there's no such thing as 'good old cars' -they're just OLD CARS" !

Sorry -off topic I know ,but it just jogged my memory when you used the words "old car"

[Lester H]

I used to admire these greatly, never drove one although I experienced the dull as ditchwater but massively over engineered 2.0 E. Certainly at first they appeared not to rust.As the thread reminds us, they were very dear when new. Descending into cliche” if it was expensive to run new it will be expensive to run old”. Sadly, then , what we see here looks like a seedy old money pit. The idea of a happy weekend of valeting and a service at the corner garage before showing it off at the pub just won’t work in this case.To extend the pub analogy, you wouldn’t dare admit what you’d paid for it...the essence of these ramblings is to boast how little you paid, and how it turned out better than it looked! This MB could be just the opposite: an old car but without the meccano simplicity of a very old ladder chassis car.

Edited by Lester H on Monday 5th October 18:37

[Leins]

s m said:

As the miles get lower, the values get higher




Plus, if you’d stashed your £50k Evo2 nearly 30 years back, driven it to the beach and back once a year, then......

Evo2 prices were about £40-50k in the mid/late-2000s too, and have steadily risen since then. But of course £40-50k bought a lot of rare air-cooled 911 and the likes in the mid-2000s too

I recall one of the British GPs in the mid-90s where someone was parking an Evo2, and a comment by one of the many watching in amazement - “What has that guy done to his Mercedes?!!”

[StuntmanMike]

J4CKO said:

13 grand for a ropey old gold Merc 190, it a grands worth of car and 12 grands worth of possibility and reliance on the reputation of that model.

In reality it looks 20 plus grand away from being a nice one, and needs a colour change as it looks crap in that one, Smoke Silver seems to mean Gold.

As with a lot of "Projects", the seller wants too close to the price of a pristine one, there needs to be a saving on just buying a mint one versus 13 grand plus escalating restoration costs and all the heartache and agro that entails, a decent respray is four grand for a start, sorting any rust out can get very, very expensive, interior refurbishment, probably needs the engine rebuilding having done 177k.

Its a sort of 190E 2.3-16 shaped object that has all the value drained from it and needs putting back, it doesnt look too horrendous but I have been here myself with other cars that look great but hide a multitude of horrors and deffered maintenance.

Couldn’t agree more.

[s m]

Leins said:

s m said:

As the miles get lower, the values get higher




Plus, if you’d stashed your £50k Evo2 nearly 30 years back, driven it to the beach and back once a year, then......

Evo2 prices were about £40-50k in the mid/late-2000s too, and have steadily risen since then. But of course £40-50k bought a lot of rare air-cooled 911 and the likes in the mid-2000s too

I recall one of the British GPs in the mid-90s where someone was parking an Evo2, and a comment by one of the many watching in amazement - “What has that guy done to his Mercedes?!!”

I’ve heard similar by people not realising it was a standard body kit for that model

[Lester H]

A1VDY said:

Overpriced scrapper/ parts car or extensive restoration but a better looking proposition If it had a proper clean ie full seats out wet vac, engine steam clean and paint mop/polish. Its only cosmetic but would help to sell it.
A mate has just bought a 2.5 16 from Romania. It's being restored out there to keep costs down. It's being completely stripped Inc interior, engine/gearbox, windows out respray ect, apparently its completely rot free.

Edited by A1VDY on Saturday 3rd October 09:15

My local body shop owner says anyone can valet a car - the wits on here will say “they often do!” But, to agree with A1, and to quote Clarkson “how hard can it be?” to improve this MB to a superficially adequate standard? Goods in shop window, and all that...

[dhutch]

s m said:

Leins said:

I recall one of the British GPs in the mid-90s where someone was parking an Evo2, and a comment by one of the many watching in amazement - “What has that guy done to his Mercedes?!!”

I’ve heard similar by people not realising it was a standard body kit for that model

I mean, you can see why. It did look like it's been Kev'ed up with badly bolted on parts!

[drewos]

Totally bonkers the options list on the 2.3 for the radio/cassette player, rear speakers and aerial at £1186 in 1985 - that is £3620 today according to the inflation calculator!!!! No wonder car stereos were always getting stolen...

[Lester H]

BigChiefmuffinAgain said:

My brother had one back in the day. I drove it for a few weeks when my car was off the road.

Never really rated it. Not that fast, loose gear change and big steering wheel made it feel a bit wallowy...

It obviously has it's fans but there are better cars from that era.

I was taken to task on this forum a few years ago for daring to criticise middle aged Mercs, based on part time trade experience of horrid parking brakes, very slow responses from the huge wheel which slowly started to move the vast bonnet with distant star ( unless vandalised) ,then sighed slowly away - usually automatics- the upside being that before the Peanut Headlight ones they were incredibly well built and solid. Glad poster agrees. Car being discussed here looks ropey.

[s m]

dhutch said:

s m said:

Leins said:

I recall one of the British GPs in the mid-90s where someone was parking an Evo2, and a comment by one of the many watching in amazement - “What has that guy done to his Mercedes?!!”

I’ve heard similar by people not realising it was a standard body kit for that model

I mean, you can see why. It did look like it's been Kev'ed up with badly bolted on parts!

Merc collectors seem to have considerably bigger pockets than even BMW ones. £300 -> 400k is a fair bit more than even the revered M3 Sport Evos go for

[StuntmanMike]

Lester H said:

BigChiefmuffinAgain said:

My brother had one back in the day. I drove it for a few weeks when my car was off the road.

Never really rated it. Not that fast, loose gear change and big steering wheel made it feel a bit wallowy...

It obviously has it's fans but there are better cars from that era.

I was taken to task on this forum a few years ago for daring to criticise middle aged Mercs, based on part time trade experience of horrid parking brakes, very slow responses from the huge wheel which slowly started to move the vast bonnet with distant star ( unless vandalised) ,then sighed slowly away - usually automatics- the upside being that before the Peanut Headlight ones they were incredibly well built and solid. Glad poster agrees. Car being discussed here looks ropey.

Old Merc’s seem to have a cult like following on here. I don’t understand it either.

[ilovequo]

Looks like a ball ache