The Totaled Mercedes Benz
by David Barth
written December 15, 2002
My '85 Mercedes Benz 190E had 245,000 miles on it. It was beginning to smoke. Rust on the fender well inside the engine compartment was so bad that the
window washer fluid and radiator reservoirs had to be wired in place because the attachment bolt holes had been eaten away. The rust situation was odd for
Mercedes, so I suspect that it may have been the result of accident damage or a battery acid spill prior to my acquisition in 1990.
My research showed that the blue book for this 17 year old car was $900 to $1,300. considering the rust and the tail pipe smoke, I wondered how I could dump the
thing for even a few hundred bucks. And then the other problem was what to replace it with.
Since 9/11, Jeffco has instituted access cards to get authorized persons through gates to the ramp areas. One Saturday in November I turned onto the gate road
and saw a big, black, ugly Dodge Durango with blacked out windows sitting at the gate, but nothing was happening. I held back. Then the Durango backed out of
the gate area. So I pulled up to the sensor, flashed my card, the gate opened, and I cruised through. However, I always slow down and stop to allow the gate to
drop so that I won't be tailgated through by whomever (terrorists?). As I began to slow, I felt a huge jolt and guess what I saw in the rear view mirror. The big, ugly
Durango with its nose embedded in my trunk!
I got out, knowing that I could get blown away if it were, indeed, a terrorist. However, it turned out to be a guy who forgot his access card. My car drove fine, so I
pulled away so that we could view the damage. His front bumper had gone right over my rear bumper and crushed the trunk, rear lights, and rear quarter panels.
As an engineer, you'll appreciate that a bumper is designed to bump and the trunk isn't. The trunk absorbed the impact so well that his bumper, which had a heavy
canvas bra, didn't even have a scratch! In fact, you could see the shape of his bumper in the back of my car, above my bumper.
He gave me his name and hangar number and said he would be over there. I drove to the airport security office which is now a 24 by 7 operation. They called the
airport sheriff who is on site every day, and they sent a security truck to summon the Durango Driver. The sheriff took down all the info. Mr. Durango and I shook
hands and left the area. I called my insurance company, Travelers, and they told me where to get an estimate. It turned out that repairs would run $4,200, so my
Benz was totaled. I wanted to sue! I wanted my neck and back to start swelling up with pain. I wanted to lose all feeling in my body. I wanted to become a paraplegic.
I was ready to sue and become a millionaire so that I could reduce my current retirement age of 82. But God wasn't ready for any of that to happen. Besides, the
impact wasn't that huge.
So, I waited for the insurance company to talk to me. They did. They said they'd give me $2,000 for the car, plus my deductible of $500 if their subrogation efforts
were successful. I was ecstatic. Not only did I dodge the problem of foisting my old car onto some unsuspecting widow, but I would get at least twice as much cash
as I had dreamed of!
Then, the kindly insurance man asked a key question I never dreamed he'd ask. He asked if I'd had any major work done on the car recently. I told him my forward
gear had gone out this summer and I'd had the tranny dropped and repaired along with all new seals between it and the engine and differential. He told me to have the
repair shop fax me the $1,900 repair bill. He called me later and said they had upped the ante to 3 grand. I was on cloud nine.
At this point, I was ready to start looking for a car in the classifieds. Initially, I wanted to buy Carol's '83 300SD (5 cylinder turbo diesel), but she wanted at least
$5,500 for it (way over blue book). So, then I thought about gas powered Benzes, and I found an '85 long wheel base, S class, 500SEL with 180,000 miles for
$3,000. I went to see it the next evening. Although it had some electrical issues, it was my "dream car" and I bought it for 3K.
Even though I've spent about a thousand on it so far to fix the sun roof (hey, if you've got one, it outta work!) and getting the rear bench seat to move (it can be
electrically moved forward by pressing a rocker switch on either door. The top of the rear seat is attached to the car, so you get a slight recline with the seat
forward.
What do I like about this car?
- It has a big car look. I like that.
- It has heated seats, but I've found that my body heat works faster than the heaters.
- It has a big hood. Stephen King might call that a phallic thing, but I like riding behind a big hood with a Mercedes star on it.
- The rear seat legroom.
- The sun roof. (My old Benz had one, too).
- The good sound system. (My old Benz had one, too).
- 5 liter V8 that is much more powerful than my old 2.3 liter inline 4.
The rear seat leg room is so great that I had to buy two sets of carpets from the local auto supply at $37 for each set (I didn't even price official Mercedes carpets).
The rear seat accommodates carpets the size of those in the front. The little puny squares provided for lesser automobiles are now beneath cat dishes in the basement.
(No offense intended to those who have "lesser" cars. This is my mid-life (or three-quarter-life crisis) that I'm nurturing here).
Then, a week after I got my "new" car, I got a registered letter with a summons in it. I thought, "Holy cow, someone is suing me!" It was actually a summons from
the Denver Environmental Agency that has arrest powers (shucks, I think even the dog catcher has arrest powers now!) for pollution on Colorado Blvd. from my old
car, now in some (legal) chop shop to be sold for parts. I do remember going down Colorado Blvd. that afternoon after work to see an investment counselor. And I
remember passing a cop. So that's when I was cited.
The options were to take my car to a ball field on a Saturday to prove it didn't smoke (after getting the engine overhauled, I guess), or to turn in my plates. Thankfully,
I had saved my old plates (God know why), so I turned them in. Of course the address of the Environmental Agency was wrong on my letter - two weeks prior to
issuing me the summons, they had moved a quarter of a mile away into a huge new, beautiful government building named after Mayor Webb, and probably paid for,
in part, by smoking car citations.
Out of curiosity, Carol and I parked our Benzs parallel in the driveway to compare them. Even though mine is two years newer, the body presses are nearly identical.
The cars are the same length. They are neary identical, inside and out, except for the wider rear doors and the extra rear seat legroom on mine. The legroom is achived
by moving the rear wheels back about 18 inches (hence "L" for long wheel base) and moving the passenger compartment forward 4 inches, thus shortening the hood
and engine compartment by that amount.