Why no? Maybe you might take MB up on the offer to restore your 240D...
;o)

Tiger wrote:
MB would make significant losses with such an offer.


That would be a bad deal for me - even after the restoration
the car would be worth less than he 15 (or even 20) grand;
it would be wiser to spend that amount of money on a newer MB
so after only 21+ years on the W123 diesel sedans maybe it is
time to look for another MB ;-)


Juergen

Tiger, are you saying that MB may be interested in restoring 240Ds?!

I've got a '74 that I'd LOVE to have them restore! Where do I sign up!
Think I could get 'em to bolt on a Turbo while they're under the hood?

:-)

- Bill

"Tiger" <tiger0002 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

A few years back Nissan bought up a bunch of old Datsun 240Z's and restored
them, for sale, at Nissan dealerships. During the course of the program they
also arranged with owners to take their privately owned Z cars in, for the
restoration, at the same price. The price was $25,000. Various afficianados
of Z's calculated that you could privately do the same job that the factory
was doing at a somewhat lower price. The private job would not, of course,
have the factory stamp on it and would certainly command less value, if
sold.

If the Mercedes restoration program everybody is speaking about is for real
the Nissan program should give you a low end range benchmark on the price.
One, of course, would expect that it would be more expensive to restore any
Mercedes, in Germany, than a Datsun 240Z in Japan. For example, Nissan
dealers will sell you a factory rebuilt 280ZX engine for $1300-1400. Try to
get a factory rebuilt Mercedes engine for that price.

I know whereof I speak, I have two Mercedes and two Z's

If for some strange reason Daimler-Chrysler has lost its mind and will
indeed fully restore an old Benz for $15,000, I for one, would like to sign
up. Who cares about resale value - I'd just drive the car for another 20
years.

I'm not holding my breath, however.

Frank, do you know anything about the California restoration shop? I read
about it in Road & Track maybe 2 years ago (or 3) and it was in the
finishing stages of being built at the time, and apparently Cali was going
to be for newer classics and Stuttgart for older classics.
Richard

"Frank Kemper" <spam-muelleimer (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote

"marlinspike" <rishayegan (AT) davidson (DOT) edu> haute in die Tasten:

No. Never heard about it. It is not common for german car enthusiasts to
have their car restored in the US and bring it to germany afterwards. Just
the opposite: US restoration jobs have an extremely bad reputation over
here. We think most of them are just quick showroom-restorations with a
shiny surface over a crappy job. Classic cars from the US usually
are worse than they look. Besides this MB Stuttgart boasts to take care for
all cars ever sold. In general many people over here think about having
their car restored in countries of the former soviet block, which are now
EU members. First of all, people over there are capable to do fantastic
craftmanship (If you cannot buy a part new, you learn how to repair it),
and second the hourly rates for mechanics are much lower than in Germany.
So a sheetmetal job, which includes a lot of trimming, welding and
smoothing, may be profitable if done in Czech republic, poland or hungary.

Frank

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