My first ‘sort of’ classic car

My first ‘sort of’ classic car was a Mercedes Benz W126 300SE. I call it a ‘sort of’ classic simply because it wasn’t really a ‘classic’ classic but an old Mercedes. I basically had 2 dream cars when I was young. One was the Jaguar XJ6 Series 3 and the other of course was the Mercedes Benz W126 300SE.

It was more than 5 years back since I started looking for one. I just loved the car for it's elegant looks and styling. The search when on and on and finally I found her. It was a day when my good friend Jon and I actually went hunting for a particular 300SE at a dealer in Old Klang Road. As we were driving to our destined dealer, we passed another dealer that had a similar model with a nice number ‘300’ on it, similar to its model (Just for the record, I’m not a numerology person but I love to see nice cars with nice numbers on them). And so we saw the car we were supposed to go and see and I was thoroughly disappointed with the car as the car looked stunning in the pictures but wasn’t so in real.

Then we decided to drive to the other dealer we had seen on the way and I got instantly attracted to it by just looking at the body. Though she needed a paint work but the body was one of the best I’ve ever seen. This was actually a 100% accident free car I kid you not and the best part was it was actually a one owner car since it was brought in to Malaysia in 1992 (it was a ’89 UK spec recon model). And that is how it started. I will give a detailed description later on the restoration process but unfortunately I don’t have the pictures before the restoration as my previous hard disk had crashed, but the picture above was the end result. Till later…