Finding a Good 190E – How Hard Can It Be?
Mercedes-Benz W201. Today, two in one post.
It’s been a Benz-filled couple weeks lately; with the North Korean 190:s making the headlines I’ve been thinking of the Mercedes-Benz W201-series quite a lot. Over here, there are two kinds of W201:s driving around. The first category consists of the cars originally imported in Finland when new, which usually means well-used cars well past a quarter of a million kilometres in their respective odometers. The Finnish 190:s have something of a rock-solid reputation despite being often bitten by the rust worm; the epithet HONEST FINNISH CAR is most often attributed to a very basic, slightly brown-around-the-edges ’80s Mercedes.
What, then, isn’t considered a honest one? It’s the second category of Mercs, the German imported ones. Finnish used car import taxation changed in the early 2000:s, resulting in a flood of 190:s, W124:s, E34 and E30 BMW:s and fully loaded Audis. And like one is likely to do, naturally doubtful and wary Finns eagerly associate these imported Germans with odometer tampering. “They’ve all been clocked, you can buy a service book from a Turkish guy for pocket change”. While that might ring true with some cars in the dodgier end of the spectrum, German examples usually have less rust and better specification.
Today I’ll show you a few shots of both: a down-in-an-alley Finnish 190E and one of its latecomer brethren.
