Doog's Mercedes-Benz E350: My Biggest Update Yet
- Thread starter Doog
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They are quite distinct from each other; and surprisingly there is only 6,354 Sedan ZHP's that were produced for US so they are kinda rare. There is a ton of 330i's though, at-least MTech 1, or MTech II is a bit more tasteful then the base model bumper of the LCI, heck the Pre-LCI had a better looking base model bumper.
Glad to hear that the DISA was replaced if they fail it is a nightmare, and can cause some serious damage.
Enjoy the 330i!
Danoff
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I do. I find the ZSP to be a superior car over the ZHP. I know some will pick on me for that, but it depends on what you're looking for. the ZSP is more comfortable, slightly smaller wheels = less tramlining and better ride (and they look better and are easier to clean). The bumper on the ZSP (imho) looks at least as good as the ZHP and is a big step up over the base model. The only thing I think I like more about the ZHP really (aside from a tiny HP bump) is the steering wheel.
Also, I know this is heresy on this site but... I think this car is absolutely fantastic in an automatic.
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ROAD_DOGG33J
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- holyc0w1
- holyc0w
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- Phoenix, AZ
Welcome back to another installment of my favorite thread on this website. It seems like more and more time passes between each of my updates now, but you'll find that I wasn't slacking off in the meantime.
In my last update, I mentioned that my motivation for switching from the '96 4Runner to the '04 4Runner was that I wanted something more suitable on the freeway, but I never mentioned why I was looking for a better highway vehicle. I was planning on moving from my mom's house to my dad's house, and getting to my dad's house involved more driving on the freeway. I didn't want to get myself into a situation where I would get tired of driving the '96 4Runner, so I sold it before I moved. The '96 4Runner was adequate on the freeway but it was better enjoyed as an around town car. I ended up moving last April, and the increased power, comfort, and quietness of the '04 4Runner have been just what I needed in a daily driver, although I'm using quietness in relative terms compared to the '96, because the '04 still has about as much wind noise as I'm willing to tolerate, but it's quieter than the '96 was. The move (the house one, not the car one) increased my quality of life behind the wheel a ton (although the car one did too, to be fair). Driving to my mom's house was such a drag that it changed driving from being something that I enjoyed to being a burden. Between a sprawling neighborhood that took forever to drive through and insufficient infrastructure on the surrounding roads, meaning there was always too much traffic using the same few roads driving miles and miles to get back to civilization, driving around there was always a bear. Now I live five minutes away from the freeway, the local roads are not heavily trafficked, and the routes I can take to leave the area are a little more diverse.
Around the time that I moved, I decided to address something that had been bugging me for a long time and get the bumper fixed on the E-Class. In hindsight, the bumper wasn't that messed up compared to the average bumper on an E-Class with the sport package (most of the ones I've seen are trashed), having a weird sort of split on one side and some heavy white scratches on the bottom center which were irritatingly visible when looking at the front end. I figured two years was long enough for me to learn how to drive my car without damaging the front bumper, so I took it to the same body shop I've always used in the past. I thought maybe the bumper could be repaired, but it couldn't, because of course. I ordered a new bumper and also new headlights because the ones on the car were getting embarrassingly faded. Most people would've just polished the headlights, but I'd rather turn the clock all the way back and just get new lenses. The front bumper ended up being a big ordeal because the first one I ordered took ages to show up. I started to think it wasn't ever going to show up because all the reviews of the website I ordered it from said it was a scam, so I cancelled the transaction and ordered a bumper from somewhere else. The next day, the first bumper finally did show up, so I had to pay for that again and cancel the other order, and the amount of phone calls that all took was more than you'd expect. After going to great expense to revitalize the car's front end, by the time it was ready, I wasn't excited for the results anymore because the process was such a drag. It did make all the difference in making it look like a nice, presentable car again, but if I could go back, I think I'd rather have kept the money and spared myself the hassle.
That summer, I took the E-Class on its first proper road trip out of state to Utah to visit @Davis and @Zyla once again. I got new tires before the trip because the previous tires were getting low overall, although each one had a slightly different amount of wear because they were all from different dates thanks to being stupid low-profile tires with an appetite for debris and going flat. The availability of summer tires at the time was pitiful, but I was able to find some Continental ones. With matching tires, a pristine front bumper and clear headlights, the E-Class was getting a lot less ghetto. The drive to Salt Lake City takes 10 hours, and the E-Class did fine, of course, with the only drawbacks being boredom and other drivers constantly getting in the way. Despite the best efforts of other road users to conspire against me, I was able to maintain an average of 75 mph for the day on the way up, and an average of 77 mph on the way down. The only discomfort I experienced was my left elbow getting sore after resting on the hard stitched seam on the door panel armrest for several hours. I averaged 27 mpg on both trips which I thought was acceptable for intermittent triple-digits cruising and generally trying to keep it over 85 mph whenever possible. As always, it was a pleasure to see @Davis and @Zyla again and run around their stomping grounds. I picked a good week to go, as a 6-speed Lamborghini Murcielago had recently been traded into @Davis' work, and he was able to borrow it before it was reconditioned for sale. Riding in the Murcielago was a hoot, and it's hard to describe just how exciting it is to listen to the Lamborghini V12 in the upper rpms. It adds such a theater to the experience that other cars don't come close to. It's a rush.
Few things look as good as mirror tint when the sun hits it
A few months later, I drove the E-Class to Temecula, California with my dad. The highlight of this trip was when we stumbled upon a BMW workshop in La Jolla, California. We were driving down a road lined with boutiques when I spotted an old showroom with BMW 2002s pouring out of it. If I had to guess, I've probably seen 15 2002s individually throughout my life, and there were more 2002s than that just in this one lot. We got out and looked at the BMWs inside the showroom through the window and worked our way around near the back. It was evening time and the shop had closed for the day, but the owner and a few techs were still around. The owner saw us looking at some of the BMWs and outside and invited us into the showroom to see his personal collection. In the showroom was a 3.0 CSL, a couple of E28 M5s, a Z1, an E21 3-Series with the Bauer top, a 1600 convertible, an Isetta, and a few others that I'm forgetting. All in all, we spent three hours hanging out with the owner and a few of the techs, just shooting the **** about all things classic BMW. I learned that my dad knew what a BMW 2002 was, because that was one of the used sporty cars available when he was my age. My dad ended up buying an used Datsun 240Z at the time, but afterwards he drove regular cars and I never knew him as someone to have really any interest in cars at all during my lifetime. The conversation we had with the shop owner and the techs seemed to make my dad remember a time in his life when he did like cars. After we left, my dad was preoccupied with the idea of owning a sports car again, and we poured over used car listings, video reviews, and lots of high-res pictures on Bringatrailer for about two weeks.
On my way home from that trip, I ran over a retread near Quartzsite, Arizona, ending my five month reign of the E-Class being pristine. The front bumper was split in the middle, all of the clips on the lower grille broke and it was hanging on the lip of the bumper, the condenser was punctured (the air conditioning wasn't affected at all, surprisingly), and some damage to the plastic underbody panels from the front to the back of the car. I made an insurance claim and the car went back to the body shop for a few more weeks. Meanwhile, my dad was browsing cars on Craigslist at a rate similar to me (obsessively), and he was calling me to his computer multiple times a day to look at random cars. Initially he was interested in E46 M3s, but I told him that those were too risky for anyone who isn't an expert. He was also gravitating towards 986/987 Boxsters and 987 Caymans, but I wasn't sure if he'd be able to fit in the smaller cabin of those mid-engined cars. We visited a Porsche dealership in Carlsbad, California, which at the time in October 2021 had nearly no cars in stock at all. Luckily they had one 718 Boxster in the showroom for my dad to sit in, and luckily he was able to fit. I was still a little skeptical about the legroom in the Boxster and Cayman, so I suggested that he look for used 911s. At one point he asked me if there were any sports cars that got decent gas mileage, to which I answered that Miatas were probably the best, but were overpriced for what you get on the used market nowadays. I also mentioned that Corvettes were known for their highway fuel consumption, but reminded him that all other aspects of ownership except insurance would still be expensive. He was intrigued by the prospect of a Corvette being fuel-efficient and began looking at C5 Corvettes. Currently there is a weird phenomenon in the used C5 market where clean C5 Corvettes are almost as expensive as Z06s, and Z06s seem to be one of the last good sports car values left.
My dad found a black 2002 Z06 for sale in Albuquerque, New Mexico with about 80,000 miles on it. After several phone calls back and forth, the seller was willing to personally deliver the car to Phoenix, which is a 6 hour drive. The day before they were going to deliver the car, they drove it one more time and decided to keep it, which is understandable since it's a C5 Z06. A couple days later, my dad found a 2000 Porsche 911 Carrera with 147,000 miles. We went to look at the car and it was very clean. My dad hadn't driven a manual transmission in almost 30 years, so he let the seller drive him around in it. I didn't feel like getting into the back seat, so I stayed behind. My dad liked the car and decided to buy it. I asked the seller about the service records and they were being sketchy about it, but my dad didn't seem to be put off by it, and the car really was very clean. He had me drive it home, and then I drove him to a church parking lot where he spent about 10 minutes learning how to drive it and then got the hang of driving a manual car again.
Up until this point, I was garaging the E-Class at home, but after my dad bought the 911, I let my dad take over the space since his car was more garage-worthy. I had been on the fence about selling the E-Class for the past few months, and no longer having a garage for it at home was the catalyst for me making up my mind to sell it. After buying the 4Runner and the 330i, I realized that I got a lot more enjoyment out of cheaper cars instead of fussing over keeping the E-Class clean, which was a losing battle. Buying the 330i was the final nail in the coffin because I much preferred the way it drove compared to the E-Class. My reason for buying the E-Class was that I wanted a "nice" car, but in practice I learned that the cosmetic upkeep wasn't for me anymore, and driving it wasn't enough of a reward to justify the means. Over time, I realized that the sport package, which made the car look so much better, was also its downfall. It felt like a contradictory car because the low-profile tires annihilated the ride quality over imperfections in the road, and while it stuck to the road well for a car of its weight, it wasn't fun to drive, because it was after all an E-Class. If I had bought an E320 CDI or an E500, I think I would've enjoyed it more, but the E350 was too middle of the road for me. The M272 V6 is a fine engine with good mid-range grunt, but I had no strong feelings about it, and ultimately I didn't really have any strong feelings about the rest of the car anymore. I enjoyed looking at it, but that was about it. For being my most expensive car to date and still being aggravatingly expensive to insure, it wasn't worth it to me anymore to have all that money tied up in it. Both of my parents were sad to see it go, and my dad was so bummed out by the prospect of me selling it that he test drove it to see if he would want to buy it, but found that the seats made him sore after half an hour. Although I made up my mind to sell the E-Class last October, it would be over six months before I actually ended up selling it. The reason for me taking my sweet time to sell it was that I became distracted with a number of things which you'll see as we get further down this post.
My dad was enjoying the 911 quite a lot, driving it multiple times a week, and was very pleased with his purchase. I figured that his internet car-browsing would wind down after finding a sports car, but buying the 911 did nothing to diminish that. He was still checking daily for various sports cars for sale across the southwest, amassing a rapidly growing 'saved' list on Craigslist. He still wanted a Corvette after the 2002 Z06 fell through, and one day he went to look at three different non-Z06 C5 Corvettes for sale. He was unimpressed with all of them and started focusing more on Z06s, which were usually found in much nicer condition than regular C5s. In December he found a red 2003 Z06 for sale with 41,000 miles. We went to look at the car and found that it was in mint condition. The owner had kept it for over 10 years and was selling it because he bought a C8 Corvette. This one was a no-brainer, so my dad agreed to buy it and 10 days later we met the seller at a bank. The seller, who was wearing New Balance shoes, complimented my dad on his shoes, which were not New Balances (though he did used to wear those for years), but were Nike Air Monarchs, which look almost identical to New Balances. I felt like I was witnessing a meme come to life. Unlike the seller of the 911, the previous owner of the Corvette was not sketchy at all and was a great guy, and the process of buying the car from him was a pleasure for everyone involved. Regretfully, I only have one picture of the Z06 so far, which is a mediocre phone picture I took of it in a parking lot immediately after my dad bought it (I hate parking lot pics and gas station pics, they're so lazy).
December would end up being a very busy month for cars. My parents had always been supportive of me buying various used cars over the years, giving me rides whenever needed to look at cars, to drop cars off at the shop, and to sell cars. Now that my dad was looking at used cars at nearly the same rate as I did, it was easier than ever to enable my habits. I had been wanting a Lexus IS300 ever since I went to look at a yellow one the year before, and I had been checking for IS300s for sale for months. To look for an IS300 for sale is an incredibly unrewarding pursuit because they're all in terrible condition and they're all horribly overpriced. I was really fixated on finding a yellow one (I still am), but at the time I just wanted any IS300 in reasonable shape, regardless of color. I found a silver 2001 IS300 for sale for $5,000 an hour after it was posted. The next morning I went to look at the car, and it had a lot of cosmetic issues, was lowered on coilovers (which should've made me walk away), but it actually drove pretty well. I bought the car for $4,700 and almost immediately regretted my decision. I really wanted a stock IS300, and this one was too molested for me. It had an aftermarket head unit with janky wiring coming out of the dashboard by the passenger footwell, the coilovers I mentioned (which were a cheap brand), and black aftermarket wheels that I didn't like. I wasn't excited by making it a project car and returning it to stock in every way, which would most certainly cost more money than it was worth.
Having not gotten any satisfaction from buying the IS300, I kept looking at cars. On Craigslist I found a Morea Green 1998 BMW 318ti that was posted that evening. The car looked really clean in the ad, it had only 146,000 miles and cost only $2,650. I slept on it, then reached out to the seller the next morning. I drove to Fountain Hills, Arizona, to look at the car which was located at a dealership, however the dealership owner had acquired the car as a trade-in and opted to sell it privately since it was significantly cheaper than anything else on the lot. Surprisingly the car was in fact as clean as it was depicted in the ad. I had very low expectations for the driving experience since the car was an automatic, and it did indeed drive like an econobox from the nineties, but other than that it drove pretty well and didn't appear to have anything wrong with it. The seller had changed all the fluids and detailed the car, so it was good to go. I really liked the color of the car, and while I had never thought about E36 compacts very much, I thought it would be a cool car to have as a novelty. Since the car was in such good shape, I didn't bother trying to get it for less money and paid $2,650 for it and drove it home.
As I understand, the E36 compact is a sort of amalgamation of E36, Z3, and E30 bits. That's also a list of three cars that I've never driven - well, I drove an E36 convertible at work once, but I drive cars so briefly and at such low speeds that it's hard to get a feel for anything until you drive several of one model - so I can't really speak as to what the implications of that mixed pedigree are on the way the 318ti drives. It feels squishy on its little 15" wheels and rolls when you chuck it into corners. Whenever I drive any small car, I always wish for it to be tossable, but with the 318ti's slow steering rack, it feels more like an antiquated, heavy car than its size and weight would suggest. With 138 hp, the 318ti is the least powerful car I've ever owned. I think its 0-60 time is about the same as my '96 4Runner was. Being a four-cylinder, it makes its power up top, so it feels quite slow for the first half of the pedal travel, but if you drive it like you mean it, it can scoot around, although it very much has to wind out since it has a four-speed automatic. In Arizona, the stakes are very low when driving on the road, so much so that people routinely screw up whenever they have to put a modicum of thought into what they're doing. Because of this, the 318ti doesn't even come close to being slow enough for it to be a hindrance. Everybody launches from stoplights, yet they take their sweet ass time merging onto the freeway, and while the 318ti isn't going to beat anyone off the line (I challenged a dilapidated Ford Taurus to a friendly drag race and the Taurus won handily), it can do whatever the situation calls for on the streets. The 318ti's second greatest weakness is that it isn't a very impressive highway car, doing 3,000 rpm at 70 mph, but that's to be expected. Its greatest weakness is the gas mileage, which isn't impressive at all for a car of its size and power. I've averaged 24 mpg in it, which seemed super low, but after looking it up on Fuelly, it appears like they all get 24 mpg. Somewhat interestingly, this is the first car I've ever known to call for 89-octane, or mid-grade gas. When I first picked the 318ti up, I posted a picture of it on r/regularcarreviews. Six months later, the previous owner commented on the post that it looked like their old 318ti, so I looked at their post history to see that they had traded the car in for a BMW X1 like the seller of the 318ti told me. I replied to the comment and they never responded after that, but it was cool to see the previous owner come out of the woodwork briefly.
As you can tell from the paper license plate, these were pictures I took shortly after buying the 318ti. However, due to a screw up by the DMV, I can't get a real license plate even if I wanted to, so it's worn an increasingly weathered-looking paper plate for the entirety of my ownership.
I had now bought two cars in the same month, but that did nothing to slow my car-browsing down. A whopping two days after buying the 318ti, I found a silver 2003 BMW 530i for sale, again in Fountain Hills, Arizona. The car was my desired spec from back when I had my gray 2003 530i; it was silver with a black interior, and it had the sport package. As it was nighttime when I found the car on Craigslist, I slept on it and contacted the seller the following morning, which was Christmas Eve. The seller was willing to show me the car that day, so I drove to Fountain Hills again to look at it. It was pouring rain for the entire day, which ended up being an asset because that's how I found out that the windshield wipers didn't work. I took the car for a cheek-clenching test drive around the neighborhood, squinting to see out of the windshield. The test drive was somewhat scary, however the car drove awesome, even better than my first '03 530i. The story with this car was that it originated in Washington state for its first 10 years, then became a snowbird car after its owners bought a second home in Arizona, where it would be driven for six months out of the year and then on a battery tender for the other six months. It was continuously maintained the whole time, and as I poured through the service records, I found that every single item that had gone wrong on my first 530i had also gone wrong on this 530i, even down to the torque converter being replaced at some point. The front bumper had some broken clips so the fitment wasn't the best, the wheels were corroded from the car's time in Washington, the trunklid had an irritating scratch right in the center by the BMW roundel, and the hood was a little faded. None of these things bothered me because the interior was in fantastic condition, somehow even in better shape than my original 530i, and this one had 190,000 miles on it. The asking price was $2,900, but the owner knocked it down to $2,700 after we discovered that the windshield wipers didn't work. The only other things wrong with the car is that it has the trademark seat twist in the driver's seat, however the point at which the seat is not twisted just so happens to be the optimal amount of recline for my driving position, so I caught a big break there. Tragically, the bulbs for the driving lights are out, so I don't have the nice yellow halos, but really it's mostly an annoyance because the car chimes and reads "CHECK SIDE LIGHTS" every single time I take the key out of the ignition, and I hate all unnecessary dings and chimes in cars. Speaking of 530is, a month ago I was looking at $1,000-$5,000 cars on Offerup because for every 250 crapboxes you can find one interesting car, sometimes. I found a Sterling Gray 2003 530i with terrible looking aftermarket headlights, the kind with the pentagonal halos, and clicked on it out of respect to my first 530i. I looked at the interior pictures and immediately realized that it was in fact my first 530i, because it had the muschelahorn wood trim that I foolishly didn't save after getting rid of that car. The odometer showed 130,000 miles, but the tamper dot was illuminated. The interior still seemed in good shape, but the exterior looked more tired. The trunklid now had an oxidized section of paint, and lord knows how bad the right rear bondo'd door panel must look by now, which was not pictured in the ad, of course. The seller was asking $3,500 and described the car as having a new radiator (which could accurately be said about it at nearly any point in time throughout the years) but needing suspension work. It was interesting to see the car appear again after six years, but I have no interest in owning that specific 530i again, although I do miss the BMW individual wood trim.
After buying the 530i, I decided that it would take the place of the IS300 and moved forward with selling the IS. I had only driven the IS300 about 250 miles during my entire ownership, and about 100 miles into it, the car started taking longer and longer to warm up. The thermostat had failed open, which is possibly the most common issue on IS300s. I took it to the shop to have it replaced, which was the only additional monetary investment I had in the car, although I had also invested some time and energy into washing it and cleaning the interior really well, as I do with every car I buy -- except for the 318ti, which came detailed and needed no additional cleaning when I bought it, which was a nice break. I spent an hour taking a bunch of pictures of the IS300 and listed it on Offerup, where I had originally bought it, and Craigslist for $5,000. This is the last time I will bother with Offerup, because it seems to attract the lowest common denominator, and a lot of people who are into IS300s are already the lowest common denominator, so these people were the lowest of the low. There were no signs of intelligent life anywhere on Offerup, so it came as no surprise that the buyer for the car would end up materializing from Craigslist. The experience of showing the IS300 to the buyer and his buddies reminded me of when I showed the '96 4Runner to its buyer; the people were nice, but they low-balled the **** out of me. Luckily for them, I really wanted out of my five week nightmare, so I accepted their piss-poor offer of $3,700. My IS300 experience was a $1,000 mistake/lesson, but I just want to reiterate that I still like IS300s and am still looking for mywhite yellow whale, I just didn't like the particular IS300 I bought. It felt like a Japanese facsimile of an E46 3-Series, which is high praise because I really like my E46 3-Series. The buyer of the IS300 proceeded to lower it as much as the coilovers would allow and re-listed it on Offerup a few weeks later for the ridiculous price of $6,700, then took it down and listed it for $6,400 a month later, and a few weeks after that, it finally disappeared for good.
For those of you keeping score at home, I had bought three cars in December, but as we saw, my car addiction had started to rub off on my dad. I was sure that my dad would start slowing down after buying the Z06, but addictions tend to have a lot of momentum, so it should come as no surprise by this point in my post that there was yet another car in the cards. My dad was driving the 911 more than I ever expected him to, and the Z06, in his words, was a more extravagant experience, but he wanted to have a sports car he could use as a daily driver. He was interested in owning a Miata, and unlike the 911 and the Z06 where I informed him of what he needed to know to make a good purchase, my only input on the Miata was that they've become rather overpriced for what you get. He found a black 2006 Miata with 95,000 miles for sale and went to look at it by himself as I was working nearly every day. One day after I bought the 530i, we went to collect the Miata that my dad decided to buy. At this point, the driveway at our house was getting very full. Somehow we were able to fit six cars in the driveway in a pinch, which is by far the most cars I've seen crammed into one driveway in my neighborhood. Luckily there were some auxiliary storage options available to relieve the pressure. After I moved out of my mom's house, I was still able to keep one car there, and as time went on, the capacity was increased to two cars. I was also able to keep one car at my aunt's house, which didn't come into play till later on. As for my dad, he was able to keep one car at my grandma's house (in addition to his Toyota Highlander that's been rotting in the driveway for three years).
We now move on to January of this year, which was the month I sold the IS300. My momentum was starting to slow down, as buying three cars in a month and selling one the following month is a lot of money, registration, and insurance to deal with. My dad's momentum was also starting to slow down after buying the Miata, but starting to slow down =/= stopping completely. At the beginning of the month, I had seen a 1993 Mercedes-Benz 300CE with 191,000 miles for sale on Craigslist for $7,500. I always wanted a W124 E-Class, and I had never seen a C124 coupe for sale, or really ever in person, from what I can recall. I'm not the type of person who obsesses over production numbers and rarity, so I couldn't tell you whether the rarest W124 variant was the C124 coupe or the A124 convertible, but the A124 seems to have had a far higher survivorship than the C124s, probably due to a combination of luxury convertibles being used as fair weather cars rather than daily drivers, and the fact that their owners seem to be significantly wealthier (the 1993 300CE convertible was $32,700 more expensive than the base 300E in 1993 dollars) and keep their cars for far longer. The 300CE I had seen for sale looked pretty nice, but I was viewing the ad purely for entertainment's sake; I had no expectation that I would look at it seriously as a car to potentially buy considering it was older and more expensive than any car I had ever bought.
A week went by, and my dad called me over yet again to look at some cars for sale. As he was trying to find the cars he wanted to show me in his 'saved' list, which probably had 30 cars on it, I noticed that he had saved the '93 300CE, so I told him to click on that one, surprised that that would appeal to him. His interest in the car didn't seem as deep as the 911, Corvette, or Miata, but he could tell that I was definitely interested in it. He asked me if we should take a look at the car, but I said that we shouldn't waste the seller's time if he wasn't seriously interested. After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that we would look at it for my dad, ostensibly. That weekend, we met the seller in Scottsdale, Arizona, to see the car. My dad didn't feign much interest after seeing the car in person, but as I said, he could tell I was into it, so I test drove it. On that 20 minute test drive, I fell in love; the car was everything I hoped a Mercedes from the golden era would be. At this point, it was known that I intended to sell my '09 E350, so my dad offered to give me an interest-free loan to buy the car, due whenever I finally sold the E-Class.
Being 29 years old, the 300CE had been maintained extensively over the years to great expense, coming with service records totaling a pretty penny if added up. The previous owner bought the car in 2014 in Oahu, Hawaii, which I thought was a really cool backstory. The car didn't originate in Hawaii, it actually came from the northeast, so it had been all over the country. The paint on the hood, roof, and trunklid are toast, but the rest of the paint on the more vertical sections of the car is still quite nice. There is unfortunately a small amount of rust bubbling under the paint on one of the A-pillars, and there is a small rust hole under where the trunk closes. The underside of the car looks excellent, not even having any surface rust. Due to the good condition of the underbody, the door sills, and under the hood, I was not too concerned about the small amount of rust on the A-pillar and trunk. The interior is in excellent condition with the exception of a couple plastic pieces that cover the seat rails coming off, and the motorized plastic arm that presents the driver's seatbelt no longer moves, requiring me to twist around and reach behind my shoulder to grab the seatbelt, which is a bothersome maneuver. The mechanism for the passenger's seatbelt still works, taunting me each time I turn the key in the ignition. The power seats work, although they are temperamental at times. The sunroof does not work, which wouldn't bother most people, but it's a little disappointing for me. The pleasure of doing the pillarless coupe thing and cruising with all four windows down softens the blow considerably, though.
The W124 E-Class is everything compared to the W211 E-Class. The 300CE started at $61,000 in 1993, whereas the E350 started at $54,000. It's a little apples-to-oranges of me to compare the 300CE to the E350 since the C124 was a more upmarket car compared to the standard W124, so I will add that the 1993 300E started at $43,800. It's clear when driving both cars that they come from very different eras of Mercedes, despite being less than 20 years apart. The 300CE feels like more than the sum of its parts, whereas the E350 feels like exactly the sum of its parts. I'm not going to wax poetic about the virtues of older Mercedes cars compared to the newer ones because that's been covered ad infinitum across the internet. The best way to sum it up is that the 300CE feels like a luxury item that never goes out of style (I'm not saying it's timeless, because at this point the oldness is part of the appeal), whereas the E350 feels more like a car to be leased and forgotten after three years. The 300CE isn't better than the E350 in any measurable (objective) regard, but I don't think that's the point of a luxury car. Subjectively, though, it's not even a close comparison. The 300CE feels so much more expensive (since it was, duh) everywhere you look and touch. The interior materials, from the carpet to the headliner, all feel higher quality than those used in the E350's interior. The sun visors telescope (the ones in the E350 did not, surprisingly), and there is a hot dog-sized visor in the middle for you to deploy when the sun is hanging out in the gap between the center rearview mirror and the roof. One difference that's particularly important to me is that the 300CE has an inline-6 versus the E350's V6. I was more than happy to trade the snappier acceleration of the E350 for an engine configuration that is intrinsically smooth and suits the car perfectly. The tall gearing of the four-speed automatic really saps the feeling of power in regular driving, but this car is one of the few that doesn't inspire a sense of urgency to me, so it's a non-issue. When you step on it, it gets around pretty well for a car from 1993, and it's a pleasure to hear the engine sing.
Every aspect of driving the 300CE is a pleasure, actually. It rides softly, not unlike an older full-size body-on-frame American sedan, and has a certain heft to it as it goes down the road. It feels like the perfect cross-section between a BMW 5-Series and a Lincoln Town Car. It doesn't make you feel overconfident, but it's planted all the way up to higher speeds and never feels too floaty. The combination of soft seats, a soft ride, and 15" wheels with some actual sidewall on the tire makes for a really relaxed ride. There's a serenity about driving this car that just wasn't present in the E350. Some other miscellaneous things about the car: the turn signal stalk is excellent, right up there with the stalk in BMWs from around the year 2000. It strikes the perfect balance of ease of use, damping, and not feeling dinky. When you first get in the car, a red diagram of fastening a seatbelt appears above the center rearview mirror and flashes a few times, which looks so cozy at night. Lastly, it's required by universal law to always mention how the doors on old Benzes feel like a bank vault, which is especially true of the longer and heavier doors of the C124. They feel so hefty and satisfying to close and produce a reassuring thunk noise.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before it became my turn to add to the extensive stack of receipts in the 300CE's folder. The tires that came on the car when I bought it were getting old, so I got a new set of Continentals, which were mercifully less expensive than what I was used to paying for tires on the E350. The car was leaving a decent-sized puddle of transmission fluid when I would park it for more than one day, so I took it to a shop in Sedona, AZ, which the previous owner had used to rebuild the reverse gear a few years ago. I wanted to take it back to the original folks who worked on it rather than finding a local shop, and I was glad I did, because it was one of the best shops I've ever been to. The owner of the shop remembered rebuilding the reverse gear on my car, and found that it was leaking from one of the servos at the rear of the transmission. The owner of the shop also had a W126 420SEL in light ivory (you know, the Berlin taxi color) that he was interested in selling to the right person. I was enamored with the car, but I couldn't justify further impoverishing myself by adding another 30 year old Mercedes to the mix. I still think about that car sometimes. After I had gotten the new tires, the car had an alignment issue that wasn't as prevalent with the old tires, so I figured I needed an alignment since it's usually good practice to do that when you get new tires anyways. I made the mistake of taking it to a local chain shop that aligned it, but it didn't actually resolve anything. This tipped me off that there was probably something preventing the car from being aligned, so I took it to a German auto shop so that it could be done right. Both the service writer who helped me and the parts guy drove W124s of their own, so I knew I came to the right place. The car needed both front strut mounts, a drag link, steering damper, and left and right tie rods. Parts were not too expensive, but as always, the labor is where you get pummeled, costing just under $2,000 to get the car driving straight. I can't say I'm surprised, because the average receipt in my folder of records for the car ranges from $2-3,000. And since the car drives straight now, I'm happy.
I really went off on a tangent about the 300CE, but that speaks to how much I like it. The 330i is still my favorite car because it combines the comfort aspect with being nimble and fun to drive, but the 300CE is a close second. I'm also very fond of the 530i, which is the best of both worlds between the 330i and the 300CE. You would think that after assembling this dream team of cars, rounded out with the perennial MVP, the 4Runner, and the curiosity, the 318ti, that I would be finished lighting my money on fire -- I certainly did after buying the 300CE and selling the IS300. But for the past two and half years, I had wanted a Saab, checking Craigslist and Offerup daily, which was nearly always a fruitless pursuit. Being that Saabs were more of a cold-weather car, there were slim pickings for me considering I live in the opposite corner of the country from where they were most popular. I had been trying to find a 9-3 Aero or 9-5 Aero with no clear preference for either model, so long as it was the Aero trim, when I found a 1998 Saab 9000 CSE for sale on Offerup in February. I always thought the later Saab 9000s were attractive cars, but knew nearly nothing about them. I would see older Saab 900s and the occasional N-G 900 for sale, but never a 9000. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing a 9000 at any car show I ever went to, nor can I recall ever spotting one on the road. I felt that if I didn't take a look at this 9000, the opportunity to get another one may never come around, and I didn't want to be plagued with thoughts of what could have been.
It was 35 degrees (that's considered really cold for Phoenix) when I left early in the morning to go look at the Saab 9000 before heading to school afterwards. I met the seller who gave me an overview of everything done to the car during his ownership. He was also into Saabs, which put me at ease and led me to believe that the car had been well looked after. He was selling the car because his main focus was older Hondas and DSMs, and the Saab was a fourth car. We went on a test drive, on which the car performed pretty well, since it was prime boost weather that morning. After checking out the car for about an hour, I was surprised to find that the car seemed to be in pretty good mechanical standing. Most used Saabs in 2022 seem like total basket cases, but this one was not. Other than the driver's seat which was pretty torn up, the rest of the interior was in good shape. The exterior wasn't bad, with average wear and tear, but the paint wasn't faded to hell like on most cars its age in Arizona. That's not to say the paint was pristine, but it was certainly serviceable. There was one big problem with the car: the air conditioning wasn't blowing cold. Normally this would be a deal breaker where I live, but since this car would be one of many, I was willing to let it slide and deal with it whenever I felt like potentially spending a lot of money. The car was listed for $3,000 with 180,000 miles, and I saw no reason to try and whittle the price down considering it also came with multiple boxes of spare parts courtesy of a parts car that was broken down by the seller and his cousin. I agreed to buy the car and met with the seller the following morning to collect the car, drive it home in rush hour traffic, then hurry to school and try not to be completely distracted by my Saab purchase throughout the day.
Shortly after buying the Saab, it would crank but not start. I thought maybe it needed a new battery, but it did not. I called a Swedish car shop that was booked out for two weeks, so two weeks later I had the car towed there. The culprit for the no-start was the fact that the fuel pump had two check valves on it for some reason, impeding it from, well, pumping fuel. It also needed a crank position sensor, which didn't surprise me. I picked up the car a week later and as I drove it home, I noticed that the thermostat had failed open since the car was barely warming up, so then it sat for a little bit as I waited to take it back to the shop. I took it back for the thermostat and also asked them to straighten the wheel. The car drove straight, but the wheel was not pointed straight. Strangely they were not able to completely straighten the wheel, but it's better than it was before. After all that downtime, I had burned through a lot of the remaining good-weather days before summer, so I haven't driven the Saab as much as I would have liked to by this point.
The Saab shares a couple of similarities to the W124 Mercedes, which I found interesting. Both cars started production in 1984 for the '85 model year, and both cars originally had a glovebox, however as time went on, a passenger airbag was placed there and the glovebox was simply no more. In the Saab, the deletion of the glovebox was substituted by a plastic holder on the side of the transmission tunnel in the passenger footwell area. In the W124, you were SOL; wherever the owner's manual goes is left up to you. The Saab has separate keys for the door locks and the ignition, which is quite the throwback to much older cars. I have been unable to verify if this is the last car to have separate keys, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Because it was developed on the Type Four platform, the 9000's ignition is in the same location as any other car instead of the trademark center location in other Saabs. One feature on the Saab 9000 that I wish was more widely adopted is that it has auxiliary reverse lights in the front of the car. Located in the very back corner of the amber turn signal lenses is a peculiar small strip. When I would reverse into my driveway at night, I noticed that the reverse lights seemed to do a better job of illuminating the area around the car than pretty much any other car, but I didn't know why that was. Later on, I learned that there is a set of reverse lights in the back of the turn signal lenses on the front of the car, helping to light up the sides of the car and not just the areas behind the car. The last cool fact about this car in particular, rather than Saab 9000s in general, is that mine was built in October 1997, the same month I was born.
The Saab is a departure from the RWD six and eight-cylinder sedans that I normally gravitate towards. My second FWD car and my first turbocharged car, the differences are immediately felt when I drive it. The E46 and E39, with their 50/50 weight distribution and extremely rigid chassis, feel way more responsive and willing to change direction as you turn the wheel. This is in stark contrast to the Saab, which feels very heavy in the front, and the steering feels surprisingly heavy just off-center, making it feel reluctant to change direction. The BMWs feel like they'll go wherever you point them towards, whereas the front end of the Saab wants to plow and go wide. Where the Saab stands apart in a good way is power delivery. In every naturally-aspirated car I've ever driven, with the closest exception being the Corvette Z06, any meaningful acceleration is accompanied by downshifting. In the Saab, this just isn't so. Peak torque is available starting at 1,800 rpm, which makes the car feel far more powerful than it actually is in ordinary driving situations. You barely step on the gas, and the car accelerates up to the speed limit so effortlessly. Around town, I like to drive at my own pace, rarely being the fastest one off the line from stoplights because I don't like to feel like I'm dogging on the car constantly. In the Saab, just barely standing on the throttle is enough to keep up with or pull ahead of those annoying people who treat every stoplight as a quarter mile drag race. At half-throttle, it feels like you're getting about 90% of what the engine has to offer already, and flooring it often feels unnecessary. When I first test drove a 9-3 Aero sportcombi a few years ago, I loved the mid-range power of the turbocharged V6. The 9000 is obviously down on power compared to that car, but the same characteristic is still present. In other cars, I'm more content to go with the flow, but in this car I want to pass everybody just so I can ride the wave of boost.
As for the rest of the car, it sort of feels like a taut Buick in a way. I suppose a more literal version of a taut Buick would be something like a Pontiac Bonneville SSEi, but I haven't driven one of those so I can't make the comparison. But the reason I describe it as a taut Buick is that while it has that big nose-heavy, FWD sedan feel, it has a firm undertone to it. It doesn't ride softly, but it's also not a sporty ride at all. It has a little bit of that springiness that the W124 and other older Mercedes-Benzes have, but overall the ride feels more firm and controlled. The seating position is high, and you feel like you're on top of the car rather than inside of it. The seats are also firm, although I can't really speak to their comfort level because the driver's seat is so distressed that the feeling of the gross, cracked leather is by far the prevailing thing that you notice. I'm not sure if I want to take the gamble on reupholstering the seat because it bothers me deeply when reupholstered seats don't match the original upholstery perfectly, or if I should just get a sheepskin seat cover, which seems appropriate for this car. I've sat in the other seats very briefly and they do feel comfortable. As I'm describing these seats, some of you may be imagining the awesome seats in the Saab 9000 Aero, however for 1998, the final model year of the 9000, the Aero was discontinued as a trim level. My car has these seats, which are a good consolation prize because they're also pretty cool looking.
A month after I bought the Saab, I first listed the Mercedes E350 for sale. In preparation for the sale, I took it to the dealership to have a recall on the sunroof bonding (AKA the exploding sunroof recall) checked, an oil change, and the transmission software updated. The reason for updating the transmission software was that there was a delay when shifting into reverse. Initially I chalked it up to the crappiness of automatic transmissions, but over the course of me owning the car, I worked at a retirement home where I drove three other W211 E350s regularly, two 2007s and one 2009. The 2007s would shift into reverse right away while the 2009 took about two seconds like mine. Later I drove a W204 C300 that also exhibited the same behavior, so I checked the build sticker to find that it was also a 2009. I googled what the deal was with 2009 Mercedes transmissions and it turned out to be a known issue later resolved by a software update. Finally, I took the black dealership sticker by the license plate off to make the car look a little less secondhand. For the ad, I took some nice pictures of it at sunset and listed it for the aspirational price of $10,000. There was absolutely no interest whatsoever, so I let the ad expire after a month and didn't post it again. Another month went by, and I was increasingly wanting it gone since it was just sat in the garage at my mom's house. I took some more basic pictures of the car, made a very brief ad, and listed it for $8,888. This finally did the trick, and more people were interested in it. I met a gentleman who was old enough to be my dad at the local park by my house and showed him around the car for ten minutes. He drove it in a circle in the parking lot for one minute and was ready to buy it. We went to the bank and he gave me a cashier's check for $8,888, then I drove the car to his house for him since he came alone. I was worried that it was going to be a PITA to sell the E-Class since used luxury cars seem to attract low-ballers who want something for nothing, so I was relieved at how easy the actual transaction was. I was back home exactly an hour to the minute after I met the buyer at the park, which is about as easy as it gets. Since he lived near me, I've already had the pleasure of seeing the E-Class driving around my area twice since I sold it. It sure looks nice on the road, but I don't miss it at all.
Before I finish this post, I'd like to shine some light on a car that's always been around in some capacity since I started this thread. After moving into my dad's house last year, it was imminent that his LS430 would be coming out of retirement. My dad kept it at my grandma's house and would drive it around the neighborhood once a month for a couple of years, then the battery died and he stopped. When the time came to take it out of hibernation, my dad got a new battery for it, an oil change, and it was ready to go. At the time, it had 118,000 miles. It needs control arms, so in my opinion the driving experience has degraded quite a bit. For my dad, the degradation was so slow over so many years that I don't think he really notices it other than an irritating steering wheel shimmy at 80 mph. At some point, both of the rear center caps fell out, and the center caps on that wheel design are huge, so it looks pretty junky without them. For the majority of the past few years, the car has been extremely dirty and dusty because I don't have it in me to wash a larger black car anymore after owning the LS400, which was solidly unrewarding to wash because it would just get more scratched up no matter how careful I was. I'm painting a pretty downtrodden picture of the LS430's current condition, but it's still a very vital car. My dad has driven it on a number of road trips over the past year and enjoys the quiet ride, the reasonable gas mileage at high speeds, and the interior space. I used it as a daily driver for a week last November and it was still thoroughly enjoyable. Compared to newer luxury cars which are isolated to a fault, the LS430 toes the line between excellent comfort while still feeling like you're actually driving a car. The steering is weightier and more direct than you would expect from a Lexus, and it has an authoritative feel when you drive it. It now has 123,000 miles and just had another oil change, during which the shop lost the car key, and then my dad lost the valet key. Recently I noticed that the air conditioning doesn't blow as cold when the car is stationary, so it's probably started to leak somewhere. 20 years is a good run for what was formerly fantastic air conditioning. It's the car that I most associate with my dad, and I think it's the car he most associates with himself. He will never get rid of it, but if he did, I would be its next steward.
For the conclusion of this post, I'd like to share some thoughts on having six cars. Obviously, it's not advisable and is financially ruinous. I'm ambivalent on whether I should be more fiscally responsible or if this is the right time in my life to be irresponsible while I'm still young with little responsibilities. In general, I've always swayed towards wanting multiple cheap cars versus one expensive car, and this year I took that line of thinking to its logical extreme. Many people online have said that five cars is the upper limit of what a person can handle before it gets overwhelming, and I'm inclined to agree. I think four cars would the ideal balance between wanting multiple cars without it taking up too much mental bandwidth, but in reality I know I could only get it down to five. I'm ready to sell the 318ti, but I couldn't bear to get rid of any of the other cars. The most annoying aspect of ownership isn't the cost of insurance, or keeping track of maintenance and diagnosing problems on different cars, but simply the tediousness of rearranging cars in my driveway depending on what I want to drive, and the mental puzzle of determining which cars I want to switch out offsite. There are some days where I feel like I'd rather just have one car that I like and enjoy the simplicity of that life, but the thing that keeps me from making that drastic change is the passage of time and the feeling of time running out that comes with it. The majority of the cars I'm most interested in are cars from the '80s-'00s that I spent so much time reading about in middle school and high school on websites like Curbside Classic. 10 years ago, those cars were 10 years old at the newest, and over 20 years old already at the oldest. These days, the cars I like are still around, but their numbers were already thinning well before 10 years ago. In the past couple years, I took note and wanted to be able to drive those cars while I still reasonably could before age, rarity, parts availability, and cost of entry all compounded to make that a much less attainable proposition. Overall, I consider it to be worth it because driving all of these cars makes life more bearable on a daily basis.
If you made it this far, then thanks for reading. Believe it or not, there are actually things I omitted from this update, so there will be an update-to-the-update in order, but probably not for some time, considering it took me three months just to finish making this post.
In my last update, I mentioned that my motivation for switching from the '96 4Runner to the '04 4Runner was that I wanted something more suitable on the freeway, but I never mentioned why I was looking for a better highway vehicle. I was planning on moving from my mom's house to my dad's house, and getting to my dad's house involved more driving on the freeway. I didn't want to get myself into a situation where I would get tired of driving the '96 4Runner, so I sold it before I moved. The '96 4Runner was adequate on the freeway but it was better enjoyed as an around town car. I ended up moving last April, and the increased power, comfort, and quietness of the '04 4Runner have been just what I needed in a daily driver, although I'm using quietness in relative terms compared to the '96, because the '04 still has about as much wind noise as I'm willing to tolerate, but it's quieter than the '96 was. The move (the house one, not the car one) increased my quality of life behind the wheel a ton (although the car one did too, to be fair). Driving to my mom's house was such a drag that it changed driving from being something that I enjoyed to being a burden. Between a sprawling neighborhood that took forever to drive through and insufficient infrastructure on the surrounding roads, meaning there was always too much traffic using the same few roads driving miles and miles to get back to civilization, driving around there was always a bear. Now I live five minutes away from the freeway, the local roads are not heavily trafficked, and the routes I can take to leave the area are a little more diverse.
Around the time that I moved, I decided to address something that had been bugging me for a long time and get the bumper fixed on the E-Class. In hindsight, the bumper wasn't that messed up compared to the average bumper on an E-Class with the sport package (most of the ones I've seen are trashed), having a weird sort of split on one side and some heavy white scratches on the bottom center which were irritatingly visible when looking at the front end. I figured two years was long enough for me to learn how to drive my car without damaging the front bumper, so I took it to the same body shop I've always used in the past. I thought maybe the bumper could be repaired, but it couldn't, because of course. I ordered a new bumper and also new headlights because the ones on the car were getting embarrassingly faded. Most people would've just polished the headlights, but I'd rather turn the clock all the way back and just get new lenses. The front bumper ended up being a big ordeal because the first one I ordered took ages to show up. I started to think it wasn't ever going to show up because all the reviews of the website I ordered it from said it was a scam, so I cancelled the transaction and ordered a bumper from somewhere else. The next day, the first bumper finally did show up, so I had to pay for that again and cancel the other order, and the amount of phone calls that all took was more than you'd expect. After going to great expense to revitalize the car's front end, by the time it was ready, I wasn't excited for the results anymore because the process was such a drag. It did make all the difference in making it look like a nice, presentable car again, but if I could go back, I think I'd rather have kept the money and spared myself the hassle.
That summer, I took the E-Class on its first proper road trip out of state to Utah to visit @Davis and @Zyla once again. I got new tires before the trip because the previous tires were getting low overall, although each one had a slightly different amount of wear because they were all from different dates thanks to being stupid low-profile tires with an appetite for debris and going flat. The availability of summer tires at the time was pitiful, but I was able to find some Continental ones. With matching tires, a pristine front bumper and clear headlights, the E-Class was getting a lot less ghetto. The drive to Salt Lake City takes 10 hours, and the E-Class did fine, of course, with the only drawbacks being boredom and other drivers constantly getting in the way. Despite the best efforts of other road users to conspire against me, I was able to maintain an average of 75 mph for the day on the way up, and an average of 77 mph on the way down. The only discomfort I experienced was my left elbow getting sore after resting on the hard stitched seam on the door panel armrest for several hours. I averaged 27 mpg on both trips which I thought was acceptable for intermittent triple-digits cruising and generally trying to keep it over 85 mph whenever possible. As always, it was a pleasure to see @Davis and @Zyla again and run around their stomping grounds. I picked a good week to go, as a 6-speed Lamborghini Murcielago had recently been traded into @Davis' work, and he was able to borrow it before it was reconditioned for sale. Riding in the Murcielago was a hoot, and it's hard to describe just how exciting it is to listen to the Lamborghini V12 in the upper rpms. It adds such a theater to the experience that other cars don't come close to. It's a rush.
Few things look as good as mirror tint when the sun hits it
A few months later, I drove the E-Class to Temecula, California with my dad. The highlight of this trip was when we stumbled upon a BMW workshop in La Jolla, California. We were driving down a road lined with boutiques when I spotted an old showroom with BMW 2002s pouring out of it. If I had to guess, I've probably seen 15 2002s individually throughout my life, and there were more 2002s than that just in this one lot. We got out and looked at the BMWs inside the showroom through the window and worked our way around near the back. It was evening time and the shop had closed for the day, but the owner and a few techs were still around. The owner saw us looking at some of the BMWs and outside and invited us into the showroom to see his personal collection. In the showroom was a 3.0 CSL, a couple of E28 M5s, a Z1, an E21 3-Series with the Bauer top, a 1600 convertible, an Isetta, and a few others that I'm forgetting. All in all, we spent three hours hanging out with the owner and a few of the techs, just shooting the **** about all things classic BMW. I learned that my dad knew what a BMW 2002 was, because that was one of the used sporty cars available when he was my age. My dad ended up buying an used Datsun 240Z at the time, but afterwards he drove regular cars and I never knew him as someone to have really any interest in cars at all during my lifetime. The conversation we had with the shop owner and the techs seemed to make my dad remember a time in his life when he did like cars. After we left, my dad was preoccupied with the idea of owning a sports car again, and we poured over used car listings, video reviews, and lots of high-res pictures on Bringatrailer for about two weeks.
On my way home from that trip, I ran over a retread near Quartzsite, Arizona, ending my five month reign of the E-Class being pristine. The front bumper was split in the middle, all of the clips on the lower grille broke and it was hanging on the lip of the bumper, the condenser was punctured (the air conditioning wasn't affected at all, surprisingly), and some damage to the plastic underbody panels from the front to the back of the car. I made an insurance claim and the car went back to the body shop for a few more weeks. Meanwhile, my dad was browsing cars on Craigslist at a rate similar to me (obsessively), and he was calling me to his computer multiple times a day to look at random cars. Initially he was interested in E46 M3s, but I told him that those were too risky for anyone who isn't an expert. He was also gravitating towards 986/987 Boxsters and 987 Caymans, but I wasn't sure if he'd be able to fit in the smaller cabin of those mid-engined cars. We visited a Porsche dealership in Carlsbad, California, which at the time in October 2021 had nearly no cars in stock at all. Luckily they had one 718 Boxster in the showroom for my dad to sit in, and luckily he was able to fit. I was still a little skeptical about the legroom in the Boxster and Cayman, so I suggested that he look for used 911s. At one point he asked me if there were any sports cars that got decent gas mileage, to which I answered that Miatas were probably the best, but were overpriced for what you get on the used market nowadays. I also mentioned that Corvettes were known for their highway fuel consumption, but reminded him that all other aspects of ownership except insurance would still be expensive. He was intrigued by the prospect of a Corvette being fuel-efficient and began looking at C5 Corvettes. Currently there is a weird phenomenon in the used C5 market where clean C5 Corvettes are almost as expensive as Z06s, and Z06s seem to be one of the last good sports car values left.
My dad found a black 2002 Z06 for sale in Albuquerque, New Mexico with about 80,000 miles on it. After several phone calls back and forth, the seller was willing to personally deliver the car to Phoenix, which is a 6 hour drive. The day before they were going to deliver the car, they drove it one more time and decided to keep it, which is understandable since it's a C5 Z06. A couple days later, my dad found a 2000 Porsche 911 Carrera with 147,000 miles. We went to look at the car and it was very clean. My dad hadn't driven a manual transmission in almost 30 years, so he let the seller drive him around in it. I didn't feel like getting into the back seat, so I stayed behind. My dad liked the car and decided to buy it. I asked the seller about the service records and they were being sketchy about it, but my dad didn't seem to be put off by it, and the car really was very clean. He had me drive it home, and then I drove him to a church parking lot where he spent about 10 minutes learning how to drive it and then got the hang of driving a manual car again.
Up until this point, I was garaging the E-Class at home, but after my dad bought the 911, I let my dad take over the space since his car was more garage-worthy. I had been on the fence about selling the E-Class for the past few months, and no longer having a garage for it at home was the catalyst for me making up my mind to sell it. After buying the 4Runner and the 330i, I realized that I got a lot more enjoyment out of cheaper cars instead of fussing over keeping the E-Class clean, which was a losing battle. Buying the 330i was the final nail in the coffin because I much preferred the way it drove compared to the E-Class. My reason for buying the E-Class was that I wanted a "nice" car, but in practice I learned that the cosmetic upkeep wasn't for me anymore, and driving it wasn't enough of a reward to justify the means. Over time, I realized that the sport package, which made the car look so much better, was also its downfall. It felt like a contradictory car because the low-profile tires annihilated the ride quality over imperfections in the road, and while it stuck to the road well for a car of its weight, it wasn't fun to drive, because it was after all an E-Class. If I had bought an E320 CDI or an E500, I think I would've enjoyed it more, but the E350 was too middle of the road for me. The M272 V6 is a fine engine with good mid-range grunt, but I had no strong feelings about it, and ultimately I didn't really have any strong feelings about the rest of the car anymore. I enjoyed looking at it, but that was about it. For being my most expensive car to date and still being aggravatingly expensive to insure, it wasn't worth it to me anymore to have all that money tied up in it. Both of my parents were sad to see it go, and my dad was so bummed out by the prospect of me selling it that he test drove it to see if he would want to buy it, but found that the seats made him sore after half an hour. Although I made up my mind to sell the E-Class last October, it would be over six months before I actually ended up selling it. The reason for me taking my sweet time to sell it was that I became distracted with a number of things which you'll see as we get further down this post.
My dad was enjoying the 911 quite a lot, driving it multiple times a week, and was very pleased with his purchase. I figured that his internet car-browsing would wind down after finding a sports car, but buying the 911 did nothing to diminish that. He was still checking daily for various sports cars for sale across the southwest, amassing a rapidly growing 'saved' list on Craigslist. He still wanted a Corvette after the 2002 Z06 fell through, and one day he went to look at three different non-Z06 C5 Corvettes for sale. He was unimpressed with all of them and started focusing more on Z06s, which were usually found in much nicer condition than regular C5s. In December he found a red 2003 Z06 for sale with 41,000 miles. We went to look at the car and found that it was in mint condition. The owner had kept it for over 10 years and was selling it because he bought a C8 Corvette. This one was a no-brainer, so my dad agreed to buy it and 10 days later we met the seller at a bank. The seller, who was wearing New Balance shoes, complimented my dad on his shoes, which were not New Balances (though he did used to wear those for years), but were Nike Air Monarchs, which look almost identical to New Balances. I felt like I was witnessing a meme come to life. Unlike the seller of the 911, the previous owner of the Corvette was not sketchy at all and was a great guy, and the process of buying the car from him was a pleasure for everyone involved. Regretfully, I only have one picture of the Z06 so far, which is a mediocre phone picture I took of it in a parking lot immediately after my dad bought it (I hate parking lot pics and gas station pics, they're so lazy).
December would end up being a very busy month for cars. My parents had always been supportive of me buying various used cars over the years, giving me rides whenever needed to look at cars, to drop cars off at the shop, and to sell cars. Now that my dad was looking at used cars at nearly the same rate as I did, it was easier than ever to enable my habits. I had been wanting a Lexus IS300 ever since I went to look at a yellow one the year before, and I had been checking for IS300s for sale for months. To look for an IS300 for sale is an incredibly unrewarding pursuit because they're all in terrible condition and they're all horribly overpriced. I was really fixated on finding a yellow one (I still am), but at the time I just wanted any IS300 in reasonable shape, regardless of color. I found a silver 2001 IS300 for sale for $5,000 an hour after it was posted. The next morning I went to look at the car, and it had a lot of cosmetic issues, was lowered on coilovers (which should've made me walk away), but it actually drove pretty well. I bought the car for $4,700 and almost immediately regretted my decision. I really wanted a stock IS300, and this one was too molested for me. It had an aftermarket head unit with janky wiring coming out of the dashboard by the passenger footwell, the coilovers I mentioned (which were a cheap brand), and black aftermarket wheels that I didn't like. I wasn't excited by making it a project car and returning it to stock in every way, which would most certainly cost more money than it was worth.
Having not gotten any satisfaction from buying the IS300, I kept looking at cars. On Craigslist I found a Morea Green 1998 BMW 318ti that was posted that evening. The car looked really clean in the ad, it had only 146,000 miles and cost only $2,650. I slept on it, then reached out to the seller the next morning. I drove to Fountain Hills, Arizona, to look at the car which was located at a dealership, however the dealership owner had acquired the car as a trade-in and opted to sell it privately since it was significantly cheaper than anything else on the lot. Surprisingly the car was in fact as clean as it was depicted in the ad. I had very low expectations for the driving experience since the car was an automatic, and it did indeed drive like an econobox from the nineties, but other than that it drove pretty well and didn't appear to have anything wrong with it. The seller had changed all the fluids and detailed the car, so it was good to go. I really liked the color of the car, and while I had never thought about E36 compacts very much, I thought it would be a cool car to have as a novelty. Since the car was in such good shape, I didn't bother trying to get it for less money and paid $2,650 for it and drove it home.
As I understand, the E36 compact is a sort of amalgamation of E36, Z3, and E30 bits. That's also a list of three cars that I've never driven - well, I drove an E36 convertible at work once, but I drive cars so briefly and at such low speeds that it's hard to get a feel for anything until you drive several of one model - so I can't really speak as to what the implications of that mixed pedigree are on the way the 318ti drives. It feels squishy on its little 15" wheels and rolls when you chuck it into corners. Whenever I drive any small car, I always wish for it to be tossable, but with the 318ti's slow steering rack, it feels more like an antiquated, heavy car than its size and weight would suggest. With 138 hp, the 318ti is the least powerful car I've ever owned. I think its 0-60 time is about the same as my '96 4Runner was. Being a four-cylinder, it makes its power up top, so it feels quite slow for the first half of the pedal travel, but if you drive it like you mean it, it can scoot around, although it very much has to wind out since it has a four-speed automatic. In Arizona, the stakes are very low when driving on the road, so much so that people routinely screw up whenever they have to put a modicum of thought into what they're doing. Because of this, the 318ti doesn't even come close to being slow enough for it to be a hindrance. Everybody launches from stoplights, yet they take their sweet ass time merging onto the freeway, and while the 318ti isn't going to beat anyone off the line (I challenged a dilapidated Ford Taurus to a friendly drag race and the Taurus won handily), it can do whatever the situation calls for on the streets. The 318ti's second greatest weakness is that it isn't a very impressive highway car, doing 3,000 rpm at 70 mph, but that's to be expected. Its greatest weakness is the gas mileage, which isn't impressive at all for a car of its size and power. I've averaged 24 mpg in it, which seemed super low, but after looking it up on Fuelly, it appears like they all get 24 mpg. Somewhat interestingly, this is the first car I've ever known to call for 89-octane, or mid-grade gas. When I first picked the 318ti up, I posted a picture of it on r/regularcarreviews. Six months later, the previous owner commented on the post that it looked like their old 318ti, so I looked at their post history to see that they had traded the car in for a BMW X1 like the seller of the 318ti told me. I replied to the comment and they never responded after that, but it was cool to see the previous owner come out of the woodwork briefly.
As you can tell from the paper license plate, these were pictures I took shortly after buying the 318ti. However, due to a screw up by the DMV, I can't get a real license plate even if I wanted to, so it's worn an increasingly weathered-looking paper plate for the entirety of my ownership.
I had now bought two cars in the same month, but that did nothing to slow my car-browsing down. A whopping two days after buying the 318ti, I found a silver 2003 BMW 530i for sale, again in Fountain Hills, Arizona. The car was my desired spec from back when I had my gray 2003 530i; it was silver with a black interior, and it had the sport package. As it was nighttime when I found the car on Craigslist, I slept on it and contacted the seller the following morning, which was Christmas Eve. The seller was willing to show me the car that day, so I drove to Fountain Hills again to look at it. It was pouring rain for the entire day, which ended up being an asset because that's how I found out that the windshield wipers didn't work. I took the car for a cheek-clenching test drive around the neighborhood, squinting to see out of the windshield. The test drive was somewhat scary, however the car drove awesome, even better than my first '03 530i. The story with this car was that it originated in Washington state for its first 10 years, then became a snowbird car after its owners bought a second home in Arizona, where it would be driven for six months out of the year and then on a battery tender for the other six months. It was continuously maintained the whole time, and as I poured through the service records, I found that every single item that had gone wrong on my first 530i had also gone wrong on this 530i, even down to the torque converter being replaced at some point. The front bumper had some broken clips so the fitment wasn't the best, the wheels were corroded from the car's time in Washington, the trunklid had an irritating scratch right in the center by the BMW roundel, and the hood was a little faded. None of these things bothered me because the interior was in fantastic condition, somehow even in better shape than my original 530i, and this one had 190,000 miles on it. The asking price was $2,900, but the owner knocked it down to $2,700 after we discovered that the windshield wipers didn't work. The only other things wrong with the car is that it has the trademark seat twist in the driver's seat, however the point at which the seat is not twisted just so happens to be the optimal amount of recline for my driving position, so I caught a big break there. Tragically, the bulbs for the driving lights are out, so I don't have the nice yellow halos, but really it's mostly an annoyance because the car chimes and reads "CHECK SIDE LIGHTS" every single time I take the key out of the ignition, and I hate all unnecessary dings and chimes in cars. Speaking of 530is, a month ago I was looking at $1,000-$5,000 cars on Offerup because for every 250 crapboxes you can find one interesting car, sometimes. I found a Sterling Gray 2003 530i with terrible looking aftermarket headlights, the kind with the pentagonal halos, and clicked on it out of respect to my first 530i. I looked at the interior pictures and immediately realized that it was in fact my first 530i, because it had the muschelahorn wood trim that I foolishly didn't save after getting rid of that car. The odometer showed 130,000 miles, but the tamper dot was illuminated. The interior still seemed in good shape, but the exterior looked more tired. The trunklid now had an oxidized section of paint, and lord knows how bad the right rear bondo'd door panel must look by now, which was not pictured in the ad, of course. The seller was asking $3,500 and described the car as having a new radiator (which could accurately be said about it at nearly any point in time throughout the years) but needing suspension work. It was interesting to see the car appear again after six years, but I have no interest in owning that specific 530i again, although I do miss the BMW individual wood trim.
After buying the 530i, I decided that it would take the place of the IS300 and moved forward with selling the IS. I had only driven the IS300 about 250 miles during my entire ownership, and about 100 miles into it, the car started taking longer and longer to warm up. The thermostat had failed open, which is possibly the most common issue on IS300s. I took it to the shop to have it replaced, which was the only additional monetary investment I had in the car, although I had also invested some time and energy into washing it and cleaning the interior really well, as I do with every car I buy -- except for the 318ti, which came detailed and needed no additional cleaning when I bought it, which was a nice break. I spent an hour taking a bunch of pictures of the IS300 and listed it on Offerup, where I had originally bought it, and Craigslist for $5,000. This is the last time I will bother with Offerup, because it seems to attract the lowest common denominator, and a lot of people who are into IS300s are already the lowest common denominator, so these people were the lowest of the low. There were no signs of intelligent life anywhere on Offerup, so it came as no surprise that the buyer for the car would end up materializing from Craigslist. The experience of showing the IS300 to the buyer and his buddies reminded me of when I showed the '96 4Runner to its buyer; the people were nice, but they low-balled the **** out of me. Luckily for them, I really wanted out of my five week nightmare, so I accepted their piss-poor offer of $3,700. My IS300 experience was a $1,000 mistake/lesson, but I just want to reiterate that I still like IS300s and am still looking for my
For those of you keeping score at home, I had bought three cars in December, but as we saw, my car addiction had started to rub off on my dad. I was sure that my dad would start slowing down after buying the Z06, but addictions tend to have a lot of momentum, so it should come as no surprise by this point in my post that there was yet another car in the cards. My dad was driving the 911 more than I ever expected him to, and the Z06, in his words, was a more extravagant experience, but he wanted to have a sports car he could use as a daily driver. He was interested in owning a Miata, and unlike the 911 and the Z06 where I informed him of what he needed to know to make a good purchase, my only input on the Miata was that they've become rather overpriced for what you get. He found a black 2006 Miata with 95,000 miles for sale and went to look at it by himself as I was working nearly every day. One day after I bought the 530i, we went to collect the Miata that my dad decided to buy. At this point, the driveway at our house was getting very full. Somehow we were able to fit six cars in the driveway in a pinch, which is by far the most cars I've seen crammed into one driveway in my neighborhood. Luckily there were some auxiliary storage options available to relieve the pressure. After I moved out of my mom's house, I was still able to keep one car there, and as time went on, the capacity was increased to two cars. I was also able to keep one car at my aunt's house, which didn't come into play till later on. As for my dad, he was able to keep one car at my grandma's house (in addition to his Toyota Highlander that's been rotting in the driveway for three years).
We now move on to January of this year, which was the month I sold the IS300. My momentum was starting to slow down, as buying three cars in a month and selling one the following month is a lot of money, registration, and insurance to deal with. My dad's momentum was also starting to slow down after buying the Miata, but starting to slow down =/= stopping completely. At the beginning of the month, I had seen a 1993 Mercedes-Benz 300CE with 191,000 miles for sale on Craigslist for $7,500. I always wanted a W124 E-Class, and I had never seen a C124 coupe for sale, or really ever in person, from what I can recall. I'm not the type of person who obsesses over production numbers and rarity, so I couldn't tell you whether the rarest W124 variant was the C124 coupe or the A124 convertible, but the A124 seems to have had a far higher survivorship than the C124s, probably due to a combination of luxury convertibles being used as fair weather cars rather than daily drivers, and the fact that their owners seem to be significantly wealthier (the 1993 300CE convertible was $32,700 more expensive than the base 300E in 1993 dollars) and keep their cars for far longer. The 300CE I had seen for sale looked pretty nice, but I was viewing the ad purely for entertainment's sake; I had no expectation that I would look at it seriously as a car to potentially buy considering it was older and more expensive than any car I had ever bought.
A week went by, and my dad called me over yet again to look at some cars for sale. As he was trying to find the cars he wanted to show me in his 'saved' list, which probably had 30 cars on it, I noticed that he had saved the '93 300CE, so I told him to click on that one, surprised that that would appeal to him. His interest in the car didn't seem as deep as the 911, Corvette, or Miata, but he could tell that I was definitely interested in it. He asked me if we should take a look at the car, but I said that we shouldn't waste the seller's time if he wasn't seriously interested. After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that we would look at it for my dad, ostensibly. That weekend, we met the seller in Scottsdale, Arizona, to see the car. My dad didn't feign much interest after seeing the car in person, but as I said, he could tell I was into it, so I test drove it. On that 20 minute test drive, I fell in love; the car was everything I hoped a Mercedes from the golden era would be. At this point, it was known that I intended to sell my '09 E350, so my dad offered to give me an interest-free loan to buy the car, due whenever I finally sold the E-Class.
Being 29 years old, the 300CE had been maintained extensively over the years to great expense, coming with service records totaling a pretty penny if added up. The previous owner bought the car in 2014 in Oahu, Hawaii, which I thought was a really cool backstory. The car didn't originate in Hawaii, it actually came from the northeast, so it had been all over the country. The paint on the hood, roof, and trunklid are toast, but the rest of the paint on the more vertical sections of the car is still quite nice. There is unfortunately a small amount of rust bubbling under the paint on one of the A-pillars, and there is a small rust hole under where the trunk closes. The underside of the car looks excellent, not even having any surface rust. Due to the good condition of the underbody, the door sills, and under the hood, I was not too concerned about the small amount of rust on the A-pillar and trunk. The interior is in excellent condition with the exception of a couple plastic pieces that cover the seat rails coming off, and the motorized plastic arm that presents the driver's seatbelt no longer moves, requiring me to twist around and reach behind my shoulder to grab the seatbelt, which is a bothersome maneuver. The mechanism for the passenger's seatbelt still works, taunting me each time I turn the key in the ignition. The power seats work, although they are temperamental at times. The sunroof does not work, which wouldn't bother most people, but it's a little disappointing for me. The pleasure of doing the pillarless coupe thing and cruising with all four windows down softens the blow considerably, though.
The W124 E-Class is everything compared to the W211 E-Class. The 300CE started at $61,000 in 1993, whereas the E350 started at $54,000. It's a little apples-to-oranges of me to compare the 300CE to the E350 since the C124 was a more upmarket car compared to the standard W124, so I will add that the 1993 300E started at $43,800. It's clear when driving both cars that they come from very different eras of Mercedes, despite being less than 20 years apart. The 300CE feels like more than the sum of its parts, whereas the E350 feels like exactly the sum of its parts. I'm not going to wax poetic about the virtues of older Mercedes cars compared to the newer ones because that's been covered ad infinitum across the internet. The best way to sum it up is that the 300CE feels like a luxury item that never goes out of style (I'm not saying it's timeless, because at this point the oldness is part of the appeal), whereas the E350 feels more like a car to be leased and forgotten after three years. The 300CE isn't better than the E350 in any measurable (objective) regard, but I don't think that's the point of a luxury car. Subjectively, though, it's not even a close comparison. The 300CE feels so much more expensive (since it was, duh) everywhere you look and touch. The interior materials, from the carpet to the headliner, all feel higher quality than those used in the E350's interior. The sun visors telescope (the ones in the E350 did not, surprisingly), and there is a hot dog-sized visor in the middle for you to deploy when the sun is hanging out in the gap between the center rearview mirror and the roof. One difference that's particularly important to me is that the 300CE has an inline-6 versus the E350's V6. I was more than happy to trade the snappier acceleration of the E350 for an engine configuration that is intrinsically smooth and suits the car perfectly. The tall gearing of the four-speed automatic really saps the feeling of power in regular driving, but this car is one of the few that doesn't inspire a sense of urgency to me, so it's a non-issue. When you step on it, it gets around pretty well for a car from 1993, and it's a pleasure to hear the engine sing.
Every aspect of driving the 300CE is a pleasure, actually. It rides softly, not unlike an older full-size body-on-frame American sedan, and has a certain heft to it as it goes down the road. It feels like the perfect cross-section between a BMW 5-Series and a Lincoln Town Car. It doesn't make you feel overconfident, but it's planted all the way up to higher speeds and never feels too floaty. The combination of soft seats, a soft ride, and 15" wheels with some actual sidewall on the tire makes for a really relaxed ride. There's a serenity about driving this car that just wasn't present in the E350. Some other miscellaneous things about the car: the turn signal stalk is excellent, right up there with the stalk in BMWs from around the year 2000. It strikes the perfect balance of ease of use, damping, and not feeling dinky. When you first get in the car, a red diagram of fastening a seatbelt appears above the center rearview mirror and flashes a few times, which looks so cozy at night. Lastly, it's required by universal law to always mention how the doors on old Benzes feel like a bank vault, which is especially true of the longer and heavier doors of the C124. They feel so hefty and satisfying to close and produce a reassuring thunk noise.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before it became my turn to add to the extensive stack of receipts in the 300CE's folder. The tires that came on the car when I bought it were getting old, so I got a new set of Continentals, which were mercifully less expensive than what I was used to paying for tires on the E350. The car was leaving a decent-sized puddle of transmission fluid when I would park it for more than one day, so I took it to a shop in Sedona, AZ, which the previous owner had used to rebuild the reverse gear a few years ago. I wanted to take it back to the original folks who worked on it rather than finding a local shop, and I was glad I did, because it was one of the best shops I've ever been to. The owner of the shop remembered rebuilding the reverse gear on my car, and found that it was leaking from one of the servos at the rear of the transmission. The owner of the shop also had a W126 420SEL in light ivory (you know, the Berlin taxi color) that he was interested in selling to the right person. I was enamored with the car, but I couldn't justify further impoverishing myself by adding another 30 year old Mercedes to the mix. I still think about that car sometimes. After I had gotten the new tires, the car had an alignment issue that wasn't as prevalent with the old tires, so I figured I needed an alignment since it's usually good practice to do that when you get new tires anyways. I made the mistake of taking it to a local chain shop that aligned it, but it didn't actually resolve anything. This tipped me off that there was probably something preventing the car from being aligned, so I took it to a German auto shop so that it could be done right. Both the service writer who helped me and the parts guy drove W124s of their own, so I knew I came to the right place. The car needed both front strut mounts, a drag link, steering damper, and left and right tie rods. Parts were not too expensive, but as always, the labor is where you get pummeled, costing just under $2,000 to get the car driving straight. I can't say I'm surprised, because the average receipt in my folder of records for the car ranges from $2-3,000. And since the car drives straight now, I'm happy.
I really went off on a tangent about the 300CE, but that speaks to how much I like it. The 330i is still my favorite car because it combines the comfort aspect with being nimble and fun to drive, but the 300CE is a close second. I'm also very fond of the 530i, which is the best of both worlds between the 330i and the 300CE. You would think that after assembling this dream team of cars, rounded out with the perennial MVP, the 4Runner, and the curiosity, the 318ti, that I would be finished lighting my money on fire -- I certainly did after buying the 300CE and selling the IS300. But for the past two and half years, I had wanted a Saab, checking Craigslist and Offerup daily, which was nearly always a fruitless pursuit. Being that Saabs were more of a cold-weather car, there were slim pickings for me considering I live in the opposite corner of the country from where they were most popular. I had been trying to find a 9-3 Aero or 9-5 Aero with no clear preference for either model, so long as it was the Aero trim, when I found a 1998 Saab 9000 CSE for sale on Offerup in February. I always thought the later Saab 9000s were attractive cars, but knew nearly nothing about them. I would see older Saab 900s and the occasional N-G 900 for sale, but never a 9000. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing a 9000 at any car show I ever went to, nor can I recall ever spotting one on the road. I felt that if I didn't take a look at this 9000, the opportunity to get another one may never come around, and I didn't want to be plagued with thoughts of what could have been.
It was 35 degrees (that's considered really cold for Phoenix) when I left early in the morning to go look at the Saab 9000 before heading to school afterwards. I met the seller who gave me an overview of everything done to the car during his ownership. He was also into Saabs, which put me at ease and led me to believe that the car had been well looked after. He was selling the car because his main focus was older Hondas and DSMs, and the Saab was a fourth car. We went on a test drive, on which the car performed pretty well, since it was prime boost weather that morning. After checking out the car for about an hour, I was surprised to find that the car seemed to be in pretty good mechanical standing. Most used Saabs in 2022 seem like total basket cases, but this one was not. Other than the driver's seat which was pretty torn up, the rest of the interior was in good shape. The exterior wasn't bad, with average wear and tear, but the paint wasn't faded to hell like on most cars its age in Arizona. That's not to say the paint was pristine, but it was certainly serviceable. There was one big problem with the car: the air conditioning wasn't blowing cold. Normally this would be a deal breaker where I live, but since this car would be one of many, I was willing to let it slide and deal with it whenever I felt like potentially spending a lot of money. The car was listed for $3,000 with 180,000 miles, and I saw no reason to try and whittle the price down considering it also came with multiple boxes of spare parts courtesy of a parts car that was broken down by the seller and his cousin. I agreed to buy the car and met with the seller the following morning to collect the car, drive it home in rush hour traffic, then hurry to school and try not to be completely distracted by my Saab purchase throughout the day.
Shortly after buying the Saab, it would crank but not start. I thought maybe it needed a new battery, but it did not. I called a Swedish car shop that was booked out for two weeks, so two weeks later I had the car towed there. The culprit for the no-start was the fact that the fuel pump had two check valves on it for some reason, impeding it from, well, pumping fuel. It also needed a crank position sensor, which didn't surprise me. I picked up the car a week later and as I drove it home, I noticed that the thermostat had failed open since the car was barely warming up, so then it sat for a little bit as I waited to take it back to the shop. I took it back for the thermostat and also asked them to straighten the wheel. The car drove straight, but the wheel was not pointed straight. Strangely they were not able to completely straighten the wheel, but it's better than it was before. After all that downtime, I had burned through a lot of the remaining good-weather days before summer, so I haven't driven the Saab as much as I would have liked to by this point.
The Saab shares a couple of similarities to the W124 Mercedes, which I found interesting. Both cars started production in 1984 for the '85 model year, and both cars originally had a glovebox, however as time went on, a passenger airbag was placed there and the glovebox was simply no more. In the Saab, the deletion of the glovebox was substituted by a plastic holder on the side of the transmission tunnel in the passenger footwell area. In the W124, you were SOL; wherever the owner's manual goes is left up to you. The Saab has separate keys for the door locks and the ignition, which is quite the throwback to much older cars. I have been unable to verify if this is the last car to have separate keys, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Because it was developed on the Type Four platform, the 9000's ignition is in the same location as any other car instead of the trademark center location in other Saabs. One feature on the Saab 9000 that I wish was more widely adopted is that it has auxiliary reverse lights in the front of the car. Located in the very back corner of the amber turn signal lenses is a peculiar small strip. When I would reverse into my driveway at night, I noticed that the reverse lights seemed to do a better job of illuminating the area around the car than pretty much any other car, but I didn't know why that was. Later on, I learned that there is a set of reverse lights in the back of the turn signal lenses on the front of the car, helping to light up the sides of the car and not just the areas behind the car. The last cool fact about this car in particular, rather than Saab 9000s in general, is that mine was built in October 1997, the same month I was born.
The Saab is a departure from the RWD six and eight-cylinder sedans that I normally gravitate towards. My second FWD car and my first turbocharged car, the differences are immediately felt when I drive it. The E46 and E39, with their 50/50 weight distribution and extremely rigid chassis, feel way more responsive and willing to change direction as you turn the wheel. This is in stark contrast to the Saab, which feels very heavy in the front, and the steering feels surprisingly heavy just off-center, making it feel reluctant to change direction. The BMWs feel like they'll go wherever you point them towards, whereas the front end of the Saab wants to plow and go wide. Where the Saab stands apart in a good way is power delivery. In every naturally-aspirated car I've ever driven, with the closest exception being the Corvette Z06, any meaningful acceleration is accompanied by downshifting. In the Saab, this just isn't so. Peak torque is available starting at 1,800 rpm, which makes the car feel far more powerful than it actually is in ordinary driving situations. You barely step on the gas, and the car accelerates up to the speed limit so effortlessly. Around town, I like to drive at my own pace, rarely being the fastest one off the line from stoplights because I don't like to feel like I'm dogging on the car constantly. In the Saab, just barely standing on the throttle is enough to keep up with or pull ahead of those annoying people who treat every stoplight as a quarter mile drag race. At half-throttle, it feels like you're getting about 90% of what the engine has to offer already, and flooring it often feels unnecessary. When I first test drove a 9-3 Aero sportcombi a few years ago, I loved the mid-range power of the turbocharged V6. The 9000 is obviously down on power compared to that car, but the same characteristic is still present. In other cars, I'm more content to go with the flow, but in this car I want to pass everybody just so I can ride the wave of boost.
As for the rest of the car, it sort of feels like a taut Buick in a way. I suppose a more literal version of a taut Buick would be something like a Pontiac Bonneville SSEi, but I haven't driven one of those so I can't make the comparison. But the reason I describe it as a taut Buick is that while it has that big nose-heavy, FWD sedan feel, it has a firm undertone to it. It doesn't ride softly, but it's also not a sporty ride at all. It has a little bit of that springiness that the W124 and other older Mercedes-Benzes have, but overall the ride feels more firm and controlled. The seating position is high, and you feel like you're on top of the car rather than inside of it. The seats are also firm, although I can't really speak to their comfort level because the driver's seat is so distressed that the feeling of the gross, cracked leather is by far the prevailing thing that you notice. I'm not sure if I want to take the gamble on reupholstering the seat because it bothers me deeply when reupholstered seats don't match the original upholstery perfectly, or if I should just get a sheepskin seat cover, which seems appropriate for this car. I've sat in the other seats very briefly and they do feel comfortable. As I'm describing these seats, some of you may be imagining the awesome seats in the Saab 9000 Aero, however for 1998, the final model year of the 9000, the Aero was discontinued as a trim level. My car has these seats, which are a good consolation prize because they're also pretty cool looking.
A month after I bought the Saab, I first listed the Mercedes E350 for sale. In preparation for the sale, I took it to the dealership to have a recall on the sunroof bonding (AKA the exploding sunroof recall) checked, an oil change, and the transmission software updated. The reason for updating the transmission software was that there was a delay when shifting into reverse. Initially I chalked it up to the crappiness of automatic transmissions, but over the course of me owning the car, I worked at a retirement home where I drove three other W211 E350s regularly, two 2007s and one 2009. The 2007s would shift into reverse right away while the 2009 took about two seconds like mine. Later I drove a W204 C300 that also exhibited the same behavior, so I checked the build sticker to find that it was also a 2009. I googled what the deal was with 2009 Mercedes transmissions and it turned out to be a known issue later resolved by a software update. Finally, I took the black dealership sticker by the license plate off to make the car look a little less secondhand. For the ad, I took some nice pictures of it at sunset and listed it for the aspirational price of $10,000. There was absolutely no interest whatsoever, so I let the ad expire after a month and didn't post it again. Another month went by, and I was increasingly wanting it gone since it was just sat in the garage at my mom's house. I took some more basic pictures of the car, made a very brief ad, and listed it for $8,888. This finally did the trick, and more people were interested in it. I met a gentleman who was old enough to be my dad at the local park by my house and showed him around the car for ten minutes. He drove it in a circle in the parking lot for one minute and was ready to buy it. We went to the bank and he gave me a cashier's check for $8,888, then I drove the car to his house for him since he came alone. I was worried that it was going to be a PITA to sell the E-Class since used luxury cars seem to attract low-ballers who want something for nothing, so I was relieved at how easy the actual transaction was. I was back home exactly an hour to the minute after I met the buyer at the park, which is about as easy as it gets. Since he lived near me, I've already had the pleasure of seeing the E-Class driving around my area twice since I sold it. It sure looks nice on the road, but I don't miss it at all.
Before I finish this post, I'd like to shine some light on a car that's always been around in some capacity since I started this thread. After moving into my dad's house last year, it was imminent that his LS430 would be coming out of retirement. My dad kept it at my grandma's house and would drive it around the neighborhood once a month for a couple of years, then the battery died and he stopped. When the time came to take it out of hibernation, my dad got a new battery for it, an oil change, and it was ready to go. At the time, it had 118,000 miles. It needs control arms, so in my opinion the driving experience has degraded quite a bit. For my dad, the degradation was so slow over so many years that I don't think he really notices it other than an irritating steering wheel shimmy at 80 mph. At some point, both of the rear center caps fell out, and the center caps on that wheel design are huge, so it looks pretty junky without them. For the majority of the past few years, the car has been extremely dirty and dusty because I don't have it in me to wash a larger black car anymore after owning the LS400, which was solidly unrewarding to wash because it would just get more scratched up no matter how careful I was. I'm painting a pretty downtrodden picture of the LS430's current condition, but it's still a very vital car. My dad has driven it on a number of road trips over the past year and enjoys the quiet ride, the reasonable gas mileage at high speeds, and the interior space. I used it as a daily driver for a week last November and it was still thoroughly enjoyable. Compared to newer luxury cars which are isolated to a fault, the LS430 toes the line between excellent comfort while still feeling like you're actually driving a car. The steering is weightier and more direct than you would expect from a Lexus, and it has an authoritative feel when you drive it. It now has 123,000 miles and just had another oil change, during which the shop lost the car key, and then my dad lost the valet key. Recently I noticed that the air conditioning doesn't blow as cold when the car is stationary, so it's probably started to leak somewhere. 20 years is a good run for what was formerly fantastic air conditioning. It's the car that I most associate with my dad, and I think it's the car he most associates with himself. He will never get rid of it, but if he did, I would be its next steward.
For the conclusion of this post, I'd like to share some thoughts on having six cars. Obviously, it's not advisable and is financially ruinous. I'm ambivalent on whether I should be more fiscally responsible or if this is the right time in my life to be irresponsible while I'm still young with little responsibilities. In general, I've always swayed towards wanting multiple cheap cars versus one expensive car, and this year I took that line of thinking to its logical extreme. Many people online have said that five cars is the upper limit of what a person can handle before it gets overwhelming, and I'm inclined to agree. I think four cars would the ideal balance between wanting multiple cars without it taking up too much mental bandwidth, but in reality I know I could only get it down to five. I'm ready to sell the 318ti, but I couldn't bear to get rid of any of the other cars. The most annoying aspect of ownership isn't the cost of insurance, or keeping track of maintenance and diagnosing problems on different cars, but simply the tediousness of rearranging cars in my driveway depending on what I want to drive, and the mental puzzle of determining which cars I want to switch out offsite. There are some days where I feel like I'd rather just have one car that I like and enjoy the simplicity of that life, but the thing that keeps me from making that drastic change is the passage of time and the feeling of time running out that comes with it. The majority of the cars I'm most interested in are cars from the '80s-'00s that I spent so much time reading about in middle school and high school on websites like Curbside Classic. 10 years ago, those cars were 10 years old at the newest, and over 20 years old already at the oldest. These days, the cars I like are still around, but their numbers were already thinning well before 10 years ago. In the past couple years, I took note and wanted to be able to drive those cars while I still reasonably could before age, rarity, parts availability, and cost of entry all compounded to make that a much less attainable proposition. Overall, I consider it to be worth it because driving all of these cars makes life more bearable on a daily basis.
If you made it this far, then thanks for reading. Believe it or not, there are actually things I omitted from this update, so there will be an update-to-the-update in order, but probably not for some time, considering it took me three months just to finish making this post.
- 11,511
- United States
318Ti's are a great chassis once you dump a significant amount of money into them. 
(I have a friend with a Dakar Yellow one with a S52)
-> ngl majority of BMW's are pretty mediocre to drive until you dump a decent into them to make them decent.
-> speaking from experience.
(I have a friend with a Dakar Yellow one with a S52)-> ngl majority of BMW's are pretty mediocre to drive until you dump a decent into them to make them decent.
-> speaking from experience.
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- 6,091
- Phoenix, AZ
318Ti's are a great chassis once you dump a significant amount of money into them.
-> ngl majority of BMW's are pretty mediocre to drive until you dump a decent into them to make them decent.
-> speaking from experience.
I agree that the 318tis make for an interesting platform to build up, and I think it's customary for any 318ti owner in the present day to entertain the thought of putting an S52 in there, or at the very least an M52. Right now I'm more interested in experiencing the contrast between having different cars rather than the progression of building up one car. I wonder if the E36 hatch will become a collectible in the future, but I'm not interested in owning it long enough to see that happen.
As for your other point, I think it depends on what the roads are like in your area. You're in the northeast, so I imagine there are more two lane roads cutting up the woods where you can actually exploit your car's handling a little. Where I live, the majority of roads are four to six lanes in a grid with stoplights every mile or half mile, and I spend the majority of my driving time on the freeways anyway. There's hardly any roads where I can benefit from tightening up the handling of my car; most turns are 90 degrees, and a lot of times there's too much traffic to really do anything other than go with the flow. The 530i is perfect for this because I can still get the satisfaction from driving a well-balanced car with good steering and a smooth powertrain while also being quiet and comfortable. In the 330i I can enjoy those things while being in a more nimble car and rowing my own gears. If I lived somewhere else I'd probably be inclined to agree with you, but the roads here are set up for high speed cruising and that's about it, so stock is sufficient for my purposes.
