Hello fellow GRMers, my name is Matthew. I’m an ex Wreck-Racer that graduated Ga Tech during this pandemic, Spring 2020. I helped bring the Insight to its final, winning, year of the Challenge. I also helped build the LS E28, and you might have seen me piloting it last year on its horribly pathetic ¼ mile attempts, all while being embarrassed by Datsaniti.
I have been daily driving an E39 and dealing with typical BMW ownership experience woes during my last year of college and postponing a project car until after graduation. Well, graduation rapidly approached, and the project car is here. A little backstory, I have owned 2 Mercedes W123’s, a pristine silver on blue 300D was my first car that I got from my grandfather.
He loved these old cars and I remember riding around in his, running on WVO when I was a wee lad. I rebuilt the engine in this silver car, for no real reason I might add, and drove that car to my first few years of school until its demise, an interaction with the back of a Hyundai Santa Fe.
I was incredibly overwhelmed and a bit tired of driving such an old car everyday, so I yoinked the engine to keep and I parted out the car.
Fast forward two years or so and 3 cars later, I stumble across a $300 240D that had a locked-up engine. I picked it up, swapped in my engine, replaced some bits, and drove it for a semester. I even attended the GRM skid pad challenge at the Mitty with it. I’m pretty sure it got up on 3 wheels and was rolling coal the whole time. Side Note: If anyone from GRM has a picture of this it would make me very happy.
It looked alright but had typical issues that go along with a car sitting outside for a decade. The rear deck filled up with water and made sloshing noises whenever it rained. It just needed one of everything… So, I yoinked my motor yet again and I sold the shell for $400.
Fast forward again. I’m a few months from graduating, at this point I’ve owned a V6/6 speed Accord Coupe, Nissan Pathfinder, Turbo Miata, Escalade, and now the E39, and what do I find myself looking for? Another diesel Mercedes, history repeats itself again. “ItS dIfFerEnt ThIs tImE” I tell myself as I shop for a wagon or a coupe. I stumble across this listing on the Mercedes Peach Parts forum with no pictures, hardly a description, and an email. I began emailing this man who lives in rural North Eastern Washington about his wagon trying to get as much information and pictures as possible. After countless back and forth emails, pictures, videos, I have convinced myself that this 40-year-old wagon is in good enough shape to fly across the country for.
You see, my dad and I were planning on doing something adventurous to celebrate my graduation anyway. We had watched every Roadkill episode on YouTube years ago and always liked the idea of flying somewhere, buying an old car, and trying to make it back. As you can imagine, it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing, especially after his schedule opened up because of the “pandemic”. I pulled a carfax for good measure, found out the car was actually sold in Alpharetta Ga (where I am sitting writing the emails at the time), it was silver on blue and the same year model as my first car, it was just a wagon. This was fate!! I bought some plane tickets for the weekend after “graduation” and told the man I would be there to buy it if he held it.
I started planning, shipping spare parts out there, shipped a fresh set of tires and made an installation appointment at a place by his house, and booked the rental car. When the trip got closer, I started packing every tool I could possibly imagine us using. I even made some custom wrenches for if the oil cooler lines exploded. I figured this was a prime example of Murphy’s law. Anything I didn’t have in that car once we started driving would break at the most inconvenient time, so I better have it all.
On the next episode…. I will document the road trip itself and then start the build thread. This has just been such a cool experience, and I knew if I didn’t start a thread soon, the memories might fade, and it would be sad to not document everything. I guess I cant end this chapter without a picture of the wagon itself. Ok here is a teaser, the pictures I received over email from the seller.
