As a so-called environmental organization, we recycle many donors every year. Most are parted out nicely and never have a chance of returning to the road. I consider myself pretty hard-hearted in this regard, but I know I’ll get into hassle one day.
I cherish cars, but I am also a repeat customer and supplier at the junkyard. I buy cars have value from the junkyard monthly, keep their precious organs and return leftover to the junkyard. I am a doctor and a butcher, but I distinguish between these two professions very clearly. When I see cars with mediocre specs but good condition at the junkyard, I become their bleach. Some of these cars may have been loved by others, I ruined these beautiful things. But I can’t feel a bit of guilt, because I always conceitedly think that I can make the right choice better than others. Moreover, I am always more generous, I don’t need to become an accountant to make a profit instantly, that’s why I always get them.
So I’m always dealing with patients and remains, low mileage car is a term that seems to have nothing to do with me. It’s not that I don’t like nice things that don’t require work, it’s just that according to the probability model, interesting-spec cars are rare, low mileage examples are also rare. The chance of them being combined is almost zero, usually either boring specs with low mileage, or extremely exotic broken pieces. I prefer to rebuild interesting specs with my own hands. For these mediocre low mileage survivers, firstly they are expensive, and then it’s better not to drive them much to change their most important tags. Their significance to me is just a research object, but it’s better not to disassemble them for research. So, just collect their pictures is enough.
On the first day of 2025, as usual, I saw a car that looked like it had recycling value from a junkyard. This is a facelift S 320 built in April 1994, please allow me to call it a 1995 S 320. The paint is 199 Blueblack metallic, 265A beige leather, a rather mediocre “hotel shuttle” specification, which is also the favorite of Chinese buyers till today. There are only five photos in the listing, one of which is the interior shot through the side double-glazing. That’s it, this is how the junkyard promote their cars, they don’t care. I am looking for a third donor for Big Apple under restoration to get a decent rear bumper, but this one seems to no longer have a rear bumper.
When dealing with people from junkyard, I have to think as a butcher rather than a doctor. Forgive my stereotype of butchers, but I believe there are innocent souls in the junkyard. What I mean is that I have to be tougher than people there. When they crush a nearly mint car in front of me, I can’t cry . I have to pretend that I don’t care about cars at all. If they know that I got something with cars, they will take advantage of this “weakness”, then everything will become difficult. It’s like being brothers with the most vicious criminals. You can’t get tiger cubs without risking them. Of course, I don’t have any psychological burden. As a veteran, I’m used to it.
Interestingly, except for cases involved in serious traffic accidents, the S-Klasse in Chinese junkyards are usually in better condition than those on the road. Because regular people prefer get rid of them as used cars instead of silly enough to send them to junkyard, which only gets 1/10 of the money, unless they really don’t care about the 9/10. OK, so you know they are usually wealthy, I don’t mean rich enough to own an S-Klasse, but the S-Klasse is their least valuable possession. I have acquired “half” 1998 CL 500, only the luckiest people in 90s’ China own such cars. Its owner was the richest man known in southwest China, when he turned 60 and decided to stop driving, he decided to send the almost mint coupe that he drove more than 20 years to the junkyard and cut it in half. They just don’t want others to get a part of their private life, especially to profit from their name. The list includes billionaires, prominent politicians, foreign diplomats.
Today’s story is not necessarily about the super rich, the above premise is just to show the possibility of finding treasure in the junkyard, S-Klasse usually end up in the junkyard for uncommon reasons. A small part of them will be kept by the junkyard owner for long time, so the condition will continue to deteriorate. Most will be sold for parts within a window, which will not be too long, the shortest may be only one day. After this, the car will be roughly disassembled and then shredded into different materials. Sometimes they are directly shredded. Cars selling by junkyard are actually not cheap, because the profit of recycling cars is considerable. When they give you $500 to get your 140, that means at least $1500 for them. Since everyone who works on cars has to make money, the least valuable cars are always in the hands of consumers.
The only interior photo made me think it‘s low mileage. I have looked at over 100,000 140s and with all the actual work experience, I rarely miss out. I miss more because of cost hesitation than mistaking a junk for a good one, those fictitious mileage and stories never get me. I contacted the seller and learned he doesn’t work at the junkyard. He is actually a motorcycle dealer with some connection to the junkyard because in China motorcycles have to go to the junkyard to be crushed after 13 years of use. Here people related to used car business are like gangsters, I put the deposit on the table and they pull the car out. If they decide to take the deposit and not show the car, the police can’t always help. But on the surface I am also one of those mafia, so as I said, the point of making these deals is not the car but the aura.
I didn’t ask for any extra photos, people in this business don’t have much patience. It’s the norm, when you buy a $50 craft, you can ask a lot of questions to the seller. But when you bid on a 50k car, some sellers or auctioneers don’t give a shit, “sold as is”. In short, people today don’t like slow, especially getting rich slowly. The more questions the worse, there will be others asking him the same questions to consume him, too. I didn’t bargain either, I could only trust myself and believe that there would be no chance of picking up a bargain in this world full of speculators. I simply paid a large deposit and told him to prepare the car and wait for my carrier. This is one of the tricks, the police don’t have the leisure to take care of small scams, so I always make a decent deposit that can send the scammers directly to jail.
The known history of the S 320 is that it has long been in a property’s indoor parking lot. The owner did not show up since 2014. In 2017 the property decided that the car owed more parking fees than it worth and decided to “clean it up”. However, the legal process was quite long and the car was not towed to the junkyard until 7 years later in 2024. Therefore there is no key. Out of my concern about theft of this keyless car, the junkyard told the above history. When I paid the deposit, the car was still locked and no one knew its mileage. Before going to the trailer, the junkyard managed to destroy the lock of the trunk to collect the personal belongings inside. There was a lute, two pieces, many perfumes and women’s boots. They took what they liked and left the shoes in the car, which were quite expensive Dior and Ferragamo.
It was pretty expensive to transport such vehicle because several forklifts were used multiple times to damage it. Don’t count on them to do the right thing, the seller promised me to protect the car before I paid, but they even stole the toolboxes and jack. When I found it, its rear bumper was no longer on the body, which was caused by the forklift. Imagine that the forklift had to lift the rear end of it to move it in the indoor parking lot, then lift it from side to the flat bed tow truck, go to the junkyard. Then off the trailer again, on the trailer again, just endless chassis damage. I can only promise that our forklift will not make anything worse. The trailer arrived late at 11:55 AM after 5 days, I asked the forklift and trailer’s driver and to take a lunch break first. We will insert a cushion underneath to protect the chassis, which is not a 5-minute task. Then I climbed on the trailer alone to check it.
First the paint was checked to determine which panels are reuseable. The readings showed all the paint was original, however, there was some flaking.
I have never seen anything like this. There were at least two such wounds under all the dust, and they continued to expand as I pried with my fingernails.
The slightly reddened but not leaking taillight strip was shot out along with the trunk lock. The junkyard guys didn’t care so I couldn’t cry either.
The rear bumper was strapped to the trunk as I requested. The bumper cover has separated from the bracket, but the skin looks pretty good.
All the stainless chrome trim has corroded badly. The green ones are patina, which means they have corroded through the chrome to the copper.
I just realized the doors had also been opened by the junkyard. Someone handy squeezed the rear passenger window open and used self-tapping screws to drill the door handle to open the door. But he must have been a novice because he drilled into the door panel the first time and left a hole on it.
The interior had an uncharacteristic musty smell, more pungent than any I’ve ever experienced.
In the sales listing there was an extra lock on the steering wheel. Now that lock has been sawed off by the junkyard, I have to be thankful they didn’t break the steering wheel…
All the wood trims lookes frosted over, some of the veneer had fallen off the aluminum panels.
The center console is not promising. Look at that wood shifter which has cracked, the A/C module screen is leaking, and the radio screen is delaminated. This car had a lot of humidity.
Leather, like new. Thankfully the main part didn’t grow fungus like the rest, but the backrest didn’t survive.
The engine bay. Nothing seems to be missing, including that indicator for checking the windshield washer fluid.
A pretty decent car, it would be my best donor ever. But I am a little disappointed because it is a bit of a shame to be a donor. It is an early 104.994 S 320, and most of the parts are no longer useful for the projects on my list, except for the panels and interior. It is a shame to dismantle the pyramid for a few stones. The interior parts look like they have never been touched, and I guess they will break when I try to remove them. Now I am a little annoyed, I feel that it is turning into a hassle. I thought that maybe it would be better for someone else to take over the car, so that I don’t know about this. But it is too late now, selling a car like this is another hassle, I have to pretend to be a mafia and do some tough things that I hate. And I have to put in some work to get it running and driving anyway, otherwise the more forklift will cause more damage. It was a cold day when the trailer was unloaded, I took some photos and decided to leave this hassle for now.
A few days later when I finished correcting the interior of Big Apple and nothing to do while waiting the leather rejuvenating, I returned to this 1995 S 320. I decided to go a little further and at least figure out its mileage, which was the part to look forward to after this hassle. Since the introduction of digital odometers in the mid-MY1994, mileage has become a lottery for many donors without power, and now let’s see how our luck holds up. First I removed the ignition lock from another late 1995 S 320 so that I could power up this car with the ignition lock with the key. When you work on these cars enough times, you unconsciously learn how to drive it away without a key. But I was glad to bring along one of our inspiring employees who tried to drill the lock from below to release the lock pin. If it were me, I would have moved the instrument cluster and worked on top of the steering column. What difference would this make besides saving some time?
When we inserted the ignition lock and turned the key, we were stunned when the yellow numbers appeared on the odometer that had not been lit for a long time. 009966, and the last trip was 53.2 kilometers… I had guessed that its mileage was between 20k and 50k kilometers, because everything under the dilapidated was still very fresh, but a car with lower mileage should not appear in a junkyard. When I said this assumption before the answer was revealed, my employees thought I was joking, and they thought that the car must be greater than 50k. 9966 kilometers really exceeded everyone’s expectations, and I have not seen a car with less than 10k in person. Slowly, everyone gathered together. At first, they didn’t believe that this was the actual mileage. Slowly they were convinced by some details, but most of them still never believed it.
I’m not so convinced either. However, there is no sign of removal on that instrument cluster. So we’re lucky not to be the first to touch that to destroy this evidence. Besides the rather poor appearance, my main suspicion is the spare tire. The tire is original Dunlop SP D8 M2, which is the top tire of the Euro version with 8-Loch, produced in the 28th week of 1994. It’s worn quite a bit, and the rim is out of round and damaged. This must have been a wheel on the car, became a spare tire due to the damage to the rim. However, it doesn’t look like it has less than 10,000 km of wear and tear, and there is also a lot of brake powder inside.
So I checked the service history and EVA warranty records. But, nothing. If a car goes to a dealer for free repairs due to quality-related failures, Mercedes after-sales will record these issues to count them in EVA. In China, dealers are in competition with each other, so regular maintenance and repair information is only stored in the dealers that process them. And these early records are not digital, so service records are difficult to obtain. Maybe this car was just driven too little to need any warranty repairs, and it has not been to the dealer since the service history was digitized in 2009.
So what happened to the owner’s manual? That one was my last hope, but it didn’t belong to this car. It belonged to a 1995 S 600, 249 Spruce Green and 545 Beige leather, which was delivered a month later. There was also an envelope in the glove box with the license plate number of that car. I’m guessing the owner had at least one other S 600, and the person driving those cars mixed up the manuals for the two cars. Other items in the car included many bulk apartment sales brochures, which were sold as a dozen floors instead of a set. The original owner put a lot of thought into the real estate. There was also an elementary school acceptance letter from 2003, which I’m guessing was from their child. If they got that child around the age of 30, it seems that the owner got the car at the age of 26? Unlikely. But I once experienced an example where the owner was only 22 years old when he bought his 600 SEL in 1993.
I believe there are still a few hundred survivors on the planet with less than 10,000 km, so this one is not so precious. But my butcher knife has been blocked, I will not disassemble this one. I would rather see this car again in a few years, rather than see its parts in my cars and think about that shame. But there is too much to do, even if it is just to keep it intact and not deteriorate further. It is even an emergency patient until it can enter my garage in a relatively promising state. The restoration project in the queue not only missed many good parts, but even got cut in line, which is a real hassle. Of course, I got some indirect benefits. If the odometer is read by anyone who sells it, the price will be 5 times. But I think few people can start it without touching the dashboard, so this is the value of experience.
To prevent secondary damage, the crankshaft has not been turned yet. Further analysis is needed to determine what is best for it, what a hassle. Even if I sell it, I have to be responsible for it, and speculators rarely do anything right. What a hassle, I have learned something. Reading the odometer is actually meaningless to me if I have already determined that it must be a donor. I should have skip the reading and just dug out the instrument cluster and thrown it away without any guilt, like everyone else. It’s too late now, these things have already gotten into me. After all, as I said, we just trying to be an environmental organization.
After returning to live in China, I have become more restrained than before. I have almost stopped paying attention to cars in the overseas market and just waited for something to appear in my territory. In any case, examples of this mileage cannot be found all the time in the world, but her it comes, what a relief. Therefore, I have become more superstitious about fate instead of forcing to find something. I believe in karma, if we can save this one properly, then we should have the opportunity to get more opportunities to work on interesting projects. There is a god watching.