I'd already had a taste of running a Merc estate in the shape of a grey 230TE and
I could see that these are a very useful piece of kit, despite not being quite as cavernous as the Volvo 760 we ran
when moving house in '03.
The 230TE had acquitted itself well enough in daily use, and having a measly 4 pot motor was fairly frugal on jungle juice. However, when loaded up
with old parts or dragging a well laden trailer, it did have to work quite hard, and was a little bit gutless for serious lugging duties. There
were a few rusty bits on it too which would be fiddly to repair, so I decided to look out a 300TE, its big brother.
This green 300TE appeared in a local paper, and, despite some variation of paint finish on some panels (eg front wings, which had been replaced) was
a straight and smooth running old motor, so I bought it. It only had 136k miles on it so I thought it should go on for a long while yet, and had obviously been cared
for by previous owners in the past. The 230TE was moved on, and the 300TE took over as my daily hack, ultimately replacing the 750i BMW altogether which was
also sold on due to lack of use.
The 300 Estate proved to be a very capable hauler, its true test coming in November 04 when it dragged a trailer carrying a 50s Ford van
over 200 miles
from down South, without a murmur, complete with a full load of parts in the rear of the car also. Although a bit thirstier than the 4 cylinder engine of the 230, I
was more than happy with the change to 6 cylinders. Despite being over 17 years old, it still pulled like a train and was a useful old tool to have around! Late in 2004 I replaced it with a newer BMW estate, thinking it'd be an improvement, but that didn't stay long (not big enough) and another 124 series Merc was swiftly found early in 2005, and hopefully will be staying for a good while yet.
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