At what point does a car’s odometer no longer have relevance? Today’s 300SD is claimed to have put over a quarter-million miles on the clock. Let’s see if it still has miles to go before it sleeps.

Geez, considering the response yesterday’s received you might think I’d instead asked you if you’d like a steamy and hair-crusted cat turd as an afternoon snack. A 75% Crack Pipe loss and a lot of dry heaving was the end result either way.

That Jag might actually have been the Queen’s Knees for tailgating at the weekend cricket match. I do recognize that’s a very narrow and specialized demographic for the car - people who understand cricket and want to get liquor’d up before a game.

There’s another fairly narrow demographic and that’s people who invest ungodly amounts of money into cars where the only significant return is your own personal satisfaction. One of those folks apparently was a former owner of .

The ad notes that in 2003 that original owner ordered a brand new OM617 diesel five-pot, crated in from Germany, and matched that up with a fresh transmission rebuild. The total cost of the work? A claimed $17,500 in pre-recession cash.

That seems to be only the biggest of the car’s maintenance and repair expenses over the years, all of which seem to be carefully documented back to the original window sticker, and which is estimated in the ad to total somewhere in the neighborhood of forty grand.

At present the car looks like it that money was well invested. That’s remarkable not just for the 37 years it has lived but the 282,000 miles it has travelled over those years. The present OM617 has only been along for the ride for the past 100K of those, but it’s probably starting to feel pretty much at home by now.

You might feel at home inside this blue on blue MB Tex beauty. The seats have apparently been redone at some point, and there’s only minor issues with the rest of the interior. Seemingly, all of the systems on these cars are vacuum operated and the seller (and third owner) says that locks and whatnot work as they should.

He does say that the A/C blows “cool” which is great if you’re Fonzi, but seeing as it’s an old system upgraded to R134, maybe that’s something to look at. The heater also has an issue, refusing to blow out the center vents at all. I once dated a girl like that...

On the outside there are apparently a few dings here and there, but overall it looks remarkably clean, right down to the rubbers on the massive American-spec bumpers.

The asking price for this Teutonic time machine is a trim $6,800. That’s pretty much what you might expect to pay for a romper-stomper 6.9, but here you get MPG not BHP.

What’s your take on $6,800 for this lovely old Benz? Does that seem like a fair price considering the condition, the miles, and the fact they don’t build ‘em like this anymore? Or, does that price make this long-running 300SD a non-starter?

You decide!

Charlottesville , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to CAHIBOstep for the hookup!

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