Stop Glorifying The W124's Reliability

This entry I'm about to make here is bound to piss off many W124 owners. If I was still in Mercedes-Benz communities, I can expect to be flamed left and right by enthusiasts. My phone may go crazy with notifications, and maybe angry mobs may show up on my doorstep. Unfortunately, I have come to terms with that and I'm not going to apologise for being this honest.

The W124 Mercedes-Benz from 1985 to 1995 isn't as reliable as you think. There, I said it.

Just few days ago as highlighted in my previous entry, my 220E's air-conditioning cooling coil broke and to have it repaired, it would set me back at least RM1,300. Now, I don't know if that includes labour, and I know that it seems meaningless to some of you reading this. I know some of you are privileged enough to tell me to "just fix it". But look, it is the pandemic, and source of income has always been a problem for me, in the sense that it just doesn't exist. Prior to the air-conditioning giving way, the fuse has blown out at least three times before we found out the cooling coil is screwed. Do you know what driving a car with no air-conditioning on a hot sunny day in Malaysia does to people? It also didn't help the many times the fuse broke, it was almost always on a rainy day. With no chances of getting outside air without opening the window, I'm either gonna soak from the rain or die of suffocation. At least my Wira has vents that you can open to let fresh air in without lowering the windows.

As if that wasn't enough, I discovered that the steering will emit a weird, disgusting groaning noise. Is the power steering running dry? Is it leaking? I don't know. Whatever that is, it requires immediate attention. So does the knocking sound coming from the rear each time I go to accelerate and some other things that you wouldn't find in, say, literally any other car. It's these things that just keep on accumulating and I'm beginning to be fed up with maintaining it, on top of refueling it.

Now look. I'm going to be honest here - the W124 220E has served me since November last year without leaving me stranded by the roadside once. My Wira, on the other hand, has broken down on me at least three times - one of them severe enough to require a tow truck. But it's these minor issues that accumulate over time that just fills me with an unjustifiable amount of anger and hatred whereas my Wira never gave stupid issues when it didn't break. Don't get me wrong, I love old Mercedes-Benz cars, having grew up in them for pretty much my entire life, but I guess there's a reason why Dad didn't keep one any much longer - he often switches them out for other cars.

The one thing I really want to address here is the constant glorification that the W124 is a "reliable car that can never go wrong" which is a statement made by pretty much EVERY. BLOODY. ONE. Have these people forgotten that the W124 is an ageing car? The youngest W124 you can buy right now is already 26 years old. I can vouch that some W124 models have the performance to match most modern cars, but do you people realise that these modern cars can achieve W124 performance with better efficiency? I'm talking about smaller, turbocharged engines, modern gearboxes and whatnot. I get really sick in the stomach when I arrived my grandmother's house and my dad's friends was like "oh the W124 will NEVER break" and I just cringed.

Look, I totally get why the Mercedes W124 gets HEAPS of praises from car enthusiasts. There's a tonne of them on the road today with varying conditions, and spares are - surprisingly - pretty much everywhere - you don't see a lot of BMW E34 or Audi 80 of the same era whereas W124s are like an endless sea of supply. It's just that people need to understand that they're old, and needs constant maintenance. You can't treat it like a Camry and go for a decade without an oil change. It doesn't work like that. Another thing is that the W124 isn't a car you can or should thrash - it needs respect. The W124 can be a reliable daily driver, but it isn't as reliable as what people make it out to be. This isn't 1985 - it's 2021.

Look, I love the W124 - and many of its siblings of the same era such as the W126 and the 190E. But if I could afford to buy a brand new car, I would have done that a long time ago. But I couldn't. It's something people who are privileged enough to apply loan for a 2020 Proton X50 would never understand, and that's okay. They can go shove it.

This isn't a post for me to ask for second opinions whether I should sell the 220E or not and keep the Kia instead, so shut up. I'm not asking for any damn opinions because the only car I can afford if I were to sell the W124 is another Wira, Saga Iswara or Spectra to take its place. If you want and can afford to buy a W124 that's either done up or in need of restoration, go right ahead. But stop telling me that the W124 can never go wrong, because in the end of the day, it can and it will.

That's it for today's entry.