Shed of the Week: Mercedes-Benz E430 (W210)
It's a V8 Mercedes for £1,200! A rusty V8 Mercedes, but still...
What's in a Mercedes boot lid number? Once, it was a simple descriptor of the engine size: 320 meant 3.2 litres, 500 5 litres. Over at AMG, 43 meant 4.3 litres, 63 6.3 litres and so on. It was all so dreamily easy.
Now, thanks to the virtual demise of natural aspiration and the rise of the turbo, iconic power-Merc numbers no longer bear any relation to the size of the motor, or anything much at all really. The E43 is now a 3.0 V6. The E63 is a 4.0 V8.
Mercedes isn't the only offender, either. BMW's M850 has a 523hp 4.4 V8 and Audi has somehow stretched its 3.0-litre A8 into a '50'. You will have no difficulty finding plenty more examples of this overnaming syndrome if you have a spare two or three hours to fight your way through German manufacturer websites. It's like a badging arms race.
Anyway, from a time when numbers meant something, here is the 4.3-litre E430. With 275hp, it was the most powerful and fastest non-AMG W210 E-Class. The first two years of manufacture ('96-'98) took place in the Daimler-Benz era, the next five under the Uriah Heep stewardship of the disastrous DaimlerChrysler dynasty. Unfortunately, our 2000-vintage Shed falls into the latter category, so it's no surprise to see visible rust on the offside.
Mercedes covered themselves in shame in the 2000s by pretending that this kind of rust was actually perfectly normal. Warranty work wasn't always carried out in the way it perhaps should have been. Many long-term customers were lost for ever as a result of the company's penny-pinching attitude at that time.
As a result, it's a given that the first few posts under this story will be along the lines of not touching it with your disinfected barge pole etc. But let's just leave that aside for the moment and look at what else you're getting apart from iron oxide.
For a start you're getting six-second 0-60 performance, though it's also true that, despite V8-based expectations, the 16-plug M113-engined E430 was oddly light on character. Engine mounts are a slightly weak area, probably something to do with the balancing issues that also afflicted M-B's M112 V6s. The anti-vibration design involved a bimaterial disc on the end of the crank, which was fine until it broke up. Fixing it necessitates locking up the crank, and to do that you need to get at the back of the engine - not a DIY job. Engine mount replacements are cheap and easy to install, though.
The E430's 722.6 automatic transmission was also used in the C43 and has a good reputation, as long as your car had the later design with magnets in the oilpan to pick up any wandering swarf. Generally, the mechanical package is strong, but it would still be nice to see some paperwork for our Shed because servicing big Germans can be a demanding business.
What with the flimsy body metal and all, you might also want to have a quick glance at the suspension top mounts. Assuming they're sound, you can then consider the idea of channelling your inner Werner by setting yourself up in some kind of faux-deluxe hen/stag punter-carting business. The gangsta tints are in place, the AMG Monoblocs are on and the '0' has been chipped off the boot badge.
W210 interiors stand up well to the type of abuse a couple of WKD-ed up lassies might dish out. As you'll be working mainly at night, the brown bits won't really matter, but for your more discerning clientele you can sort out the lacy wings with a sheet of wet'n'dry and a small pot of Hammerite.
The only structural corrosion issue to be picked up as an advisory by the MOT tester in March was one jacking point, a classic W210 ailment. The vendor tells us that mending it is a half-hour job. That's a half-hour he didn't have, obviously, possibly because half an hour could easily turn into half a fortnight if you're the sort who can't stop themselves looking a bit more closely at the state of play underside.
But all this is why you can have a V8 Mercedes outside your house for only £1,200. Try to imagine what the buy price would have been if the Benz shareholders hadn't taken such a greedy and short-sighted decision on quality standards back in the late 1990s. Double that at least.
See the full ad here.
All of one full stop in the sellers spiel. The car looks properly knackered.
It would be nice if SOTW was at least a *little* bit realistic again. Or failing that, at least some humour. This article reads so drily and cynically, it feels as if the author themselves didn't even give a damn.
Do the maths: it's a huge, high spec example of what was, when new, one of the most refined cars in the world. Yes, it's been mucked about with and the rising damp has started, but it will appeal to those who want the maximum bang for their buck, so to speak. The very opposite to last week's Fiat.
For the money, I'd consider it as a sort of upmarket station car (if I needed one): surely a lovely old thing to flop into after a hard day at the office, no?
Shed is not implying you should buy it - merely bringing it to your attention. If offended, please avoid. Just because you could, doesn't mean you should.
If the body is that bad imagine what the chassis is like, the thought of a spring perch failure which these are notorious for is enough to put me off.
If they didn't rust so badly they'd be a perfect shed with the 'little' V8 engine. Some colours seem to do better than others with silver always seeming to be the worst.
Which is why some dolt has stuck an AMG badge on it's boot lid...
My godfather had one of these, elderly retired bank manager, had it fully sped'd from new, and adhered to the servicing (in fact, had it serviced more often than necessary) and corrosion inspection without fail at the supplying MB dealer.
Surprise surprise, the tin worm appeared and MB gave him the bums rush. He pointed out that they had inspected it every year for corrosion and they just weren't interested (despite it corroding from the inside out, or outside in, whichever was supposed to be covered.
Bless him, he went to the nearby Toyota dealer and bought an Avensis D4D auto, as it is to be his last car before giving up driving (and he was prepared to spend serious wedge on his last MB).
Whilst waiting for the Toyota to be built he drove around were he lives in North London with a big home-made sign in his Merc telling people to avoid the marque.
s
tty attitude and they lost a £50k+ sale (and yes, its a big difference between a Toybota and a Merc...)There's a silver E55 AMG i see in my local Tesco on a weekly basis and there's no evidence of rust at all; do or did owners keep these better or is it because an increasing number seem to be being imported from the salt-free roads of Japan?
I lived in Germany back in the early 1990's, and in/around Stuttgart I used to see these driving around with all the disguise stickers on - it was more gaffer tape than camo wraps in those days. The W124 had (and still has) a lot of love in Germany, so the W210 had big boots to fill. A couple of colleagues had the W124, and they just didn't like the looks of the W210. The drive/package was very much secondary, as the assumption was it would be the exact same as their old cars! They all kept their W124s longer than they normally would have.
Anyhow, fast forward 25 years (Christ, where did that go?) and I think they're as unappealing as they were new. The E430 would be a straight line hoot I'm sure, but it needs a towbar for that fuel bowser you would constantly require. The facelift (2000ish) improved the W210 looks slightly, but they still looked like... well... a German taxi.
Also I'm not sure about the flimsy metal comment. These - like the W124 before them - had certain areas which were poorly designed where massive amounts of muck & road grime / salt would build up, the front wings being the first to go. It was less about the thickness / quality of the metal, but what they were subjected to.
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