Going into the 1970s, the styling of Mercedes-Benz sedans was beginning to look a little...well, stodgy and dated would be a charitable way to describe it.
Detroit had been rocking a slick fuselage look since the mid/late-Sixties while the W114 and W108 Benzes had prominent fenders and grilles and stacked headlamps and were starting to become more visually reminiscent of Checker cabs than the well-engineered Teutonic sleds they actually were.
The first winds of change came with the R107 SL-class convertibles and were immediately followed by the W116 S-class sedans and coupes.
The new styling, with its modern blended fenders and more aero front end featuring horizontally-arrayed lighting and only a vestigial chrome grille surround as a nod to the radiator shells of the past, trickled down to the smaller W123 in 1976.
Back in the early Seventies the U.S. government was still saving us from the dangers of headlamps that weren't uncovered, round sealed beams, so the tidy aero look of the German original was disrupted on the American-market cars. In 1980 the inner fog lamps got amber lenses, so this Light Ivory 280E sedan is a '77-'79 model.
Powered by a 142 horsepower 2.8L version of the Mercedes M110 DOHC 12V inline-six, performance was typical Malaise Era sedan. Car and Driver's 1977 280E test car managed a 12.3 second jog to sixty and ambled through the quarter mile in 18.9 seconds at 74.8 mph. Top speed was measured at 107 mph. Acceleration would have been no match for a V8 Cadillac Seville, and the base price of $15,435 (just over eighty grand in 2024 dollars) would have bought you two and a half loaded Ford Granadas, but in terms of build quality there was no longer any comparison between Stuttgart and Detroit.
This one was photographed in August of 2024 using a Nikon D300S and 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II zoom lens.
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