1985 Mercedes-Benz 230 CE

This 1985 example has covered only 125,000 miles in the hands of six owners before our vendor, who bought it before the second lockdown with the intention of adding to that figure considerably. However, another year heavily affected by Covid has seen him get closer to his 80th birthday and the expected use just did not materialise – so this car, like a couple of his other classics, is for sale.

Such a six-figure mileage might be disconcerting on some cars, but it’s pretty moderate for one of these, averaging at only 3500 a year. Even so, a previous owner had a top-end rebuild performed on the engine and it’s now as quiet and smooth as can be, starting first turn.

The body and interior are showing their age a little more, if you know where to look, with invoices in the well-stocked history folder for repairs and a bit of paint here and there – though you’d be hard-pressed to tell, if you hadn’t read the crib sheet.

There are some minor flakes of corrosion for the next owner to deal with while they’re small, plus a view to be taken about the hole on the driver’s seat bolster, but otherwise this is a sound and handsome car ready to go anywhere. It’s recently passed another MoT with advisories only on slightly perished driveshaft boots and elderly tyres.

This paint, which we think is 861 Silbergrun metallic, suits the 230CE well. It’s been re-done in places but blended professionally so that it’s hard to spot any join. Indeed, the car’s flanks look straight and clean, free from scrapes or dents.

You have to get down low to see any flaws, and even then it’s nothing major – slight blisters on the seam line of the front valance and behind the bumper, another one at the trailing edge of the offside front wheel-arch, something similar right at the back of the rear arch on the same side.

The rear bumper has a split in the chrome on one lower corner where it’s corroded behind, but otherwise the brightwork is very good. The rubber weathersealing is showing its age here and there and the rubber strip in the rear bumper has the odd small mark, but hey – it’s 36 years old.

Lamp lenses front and rear are undamaged and the glass is good too. The wheels are immaculate and have presumably been stripped and re-finished at some point in the not-too-distant past. The tyres they wear carry plenty of tread but are date stamped from 2008, and as a few age-related cracks are starting to appear, they should probably be replaced before long.

We’ll deal with the bad bit before we enjoy all that’s good – that driver’s seat bolster has slowly worn a hole over the years, with first the fabric and then the scrim foam disappearing. It makes no difference to the comfort of the seat once you’re in, but a good-quality repair would boost the general impression a good deal.

The vendor suggests taking the cloth from the central armrest, which could then itself be re-covered: new material on the armrest would contrast less than a brand-new panel on the bolster of a seat with almost four decades of sun-fading. Maybe it’s time to track down some new plastic trim for the inner seat hinges too – the existing bits are somewhat scarred after so many years of questing seatbelt tongues.

It’s worth doing because everything else is so nice. The passenger seat has survived very well and those in the rear look untouched, sporting a full set of three seatbelts, should you need to move the family.

The dash is shiny and intact where many have started to crack or delaminate. Just one of the wood fillets, the one on the glovebox lid, is trying to come away at one end.

On the floor there are dark over-mats, themselves protecting the original pale mats, which in turn can be lifted away to reveal solid front floors under the insulation. Control-wise, the vendor says everything works from the vacuum-assisted central locking and window lifts to the later Sony CD radio. There are aftermarket Pioneer pod speakers on the rear shelf.

The powered sunroof behaves itself too, showing no evidence of leaks in the clean headlining surrounding the aperture, and opening and closing well. In the boot, all is clean and nice, and the carpet can be lifted out to reveal a near-immaculate boot floor and spare wheel well free from any visible rust.

As described by the vendor, this Mercedes sounds as smooth, quiet and polite as a posh German luxury coupé ought to, even with only four cylinders rather than six. It starts first time, selects all its forward gears smoothly and correctly and has the expected ‘go anywhere’ feel. There is a slight lurch when engaging reverse gear but this could be a simple linkage adjustment or a symptom eliminated by a transmission fluid service, and it doesn’t affect the car’s operation once in gear.

Peering underneath we can find plenty of the traditional Teutonic underseal, which makes it hard to spot where earlier repairs were carried out, but they must have been done rather well to blend in so neatly. The jacking points in the sills – upward-angled tubes into which the jack fits – look sound. So does the other W123 weak point, the floor area around the huge trailing arm mounts.

Much of the exhaust looks to be a new stainless steel system, though it’s jumped off its hangers at one point under the back axle, while the other moving parts – steering, brakes, bushes – all look very serviceable, as you’d expect after a new MoT.

The engine bay is presentable and functional rather than anything intended to win rosettes in a show field, though the only sign of a past leak is some oil residue on the front of the engine. Its location just under the filler might not be a coincidence – it’s easy to slop a bit over the lip of the hole when you’re topping it up.

There’s heaps to go on here, with a service book showing stamps right back to the 1980s and then sheafs of receipts from more recent decades. There are also numerous MoTs to support the mileage.

Those receipts cover various jobs, some larger than others, which you’d expect to find in the history of a car kept in more or less regular use for so long. We see brake work, a new window mechanism, and around seven or eight years ago that work to the cylinder head that included a head skim, new gasket, re-seated valves, a new timing chain and tensioners and new studs and gasket for the exhaust manifold too.

Before that, the car seems to have had some superficial rust repairs to arches and the rear screen scuttle, with paint to suit, while most recently it’s required a new electric fuel pump in 2020 to get past an MoT tester who spotted a leak. Also in 2020 it had a welded repair to the offside front floor.

There’s a good deal else, too, and it all points to a car that’s spent its life in the hands of people who don’t mind spending money on it – especially in the last ten or fifteen years. That sunroof, for instance, is functional and watertight because someone spent £500 having it rebuilt and re-sealed in 2012.

From 1988 the car wore a private plate – MUM 27P – but it’s been back on its original number since 2009.

Even very well-built cars show their age eventually, which is why it’s important to find one with solid evidence of upkeep from caring owners, just as we have here. It’s left this example as an excellent candidate for further use and minor cosmetic improvements as you go along. It’s one to drive, for sure, in the confidence that it won’t condemn you to taking it off the road for major work like some of the thinly-disguised projects out there.

We think it should fetch between £6000 and £11,000, which is a wide range, but ‘youngtimer’ German classics are one of the sectors in the market to show consistent growth, even in recent years when more traditional choices have sometimes faltered. There may be quite a few 1980s nostalgists who fancy this as their daily driver…so bid bravely.

If it was ours? We’d find a professional trimmer and seek their advice on that driver’s seat, and we’d get a bodyshop to touch in the little blisters lower down on the arches and valance. We’d probably seek out a period Becker radio-cassette for that DIN slot and retire the Sony unit, leaving nothing to do but don the Ray-Ban Wayfarers and cruise into the sunset.

Viewing is always encouraged and as stated this car is located at our Abingdon headquarters; we are open Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm and to arrange an appointment please use the ‘Contact Seller’ button at the top of the listing to make an appointment. Feel free to ask any questions or make observations in the comments section below, or try our ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.