It’s no secret to those who know me or frequent TTS (when we actually post things) that I can be a little fickle when it comes to the cars that grace my forecourt. Call it short attention-span, indecisiveness, or just whimsy, but I like to think of it as my quest to own one of everything – or at least everything that I want to own. I also tend not to get too attached to cars, unlike others in my house and on my insurance…  In any case, it occurred to me that there has been a fair amount of change in the Hitchcock fleet over the past several months, so I figured it was high time for an update.

Gone But Not Forgotten (in some cases *unfortunately* not forgotten)

2008 BMW X5

I originally bought the X5 3.0 Si as a daily driver for myself. It was well-maintained, comfortable, and I liked the 2-piece tailgate that would conceivably allow a photographer to hang out the back doing automotive photo shoots with at least a little bit of a safety factor. I liked the X5, and particularly the weighted steering that reminded me of our BMWs of yore. After a few months driving it, I decided I needed something bigger both for car photography and also to haul things, having decided to move to a place in the (relative) country with more space and more need for carrying big things like fence rails and mulch. At the same time, our daughter’s 2002 Mercedes ML320 was getting a little tired, and she coveted the BMW. I bought a Toyota Tundra, and she got the X5 and drove it for her first two years of college. 

For her third year of college, the same daughter elected to study abroad. Having settled-in to country life and not wanting a big expensive truck anymore, I sold the Tundra (see below) and took to driving the X5 again. Her one request when she left was that we wouldn’t sell her car. 

Well, as anyone who has owned well-loved and driven German cars knows, once every few years they need some major therapy. The X5 was no different, and decided it need tires and suspension work, started leaking oil, and every so often dumped noxious fumes into the cabin. After paying a not insignificant amount of money to rectify the issues to make the car safe to at least get the kid through the rest of school, it decided to do the noxious fume thing again. Having paid too much in repairs already (I think I’m STILL paying those bills and hence unfortunately not forgotten) and secretly strategizing to get my wife into a new car, the X5 went away. Technically, I didn’t sell it – I traded it in. But fear not, our intrepid study-abroader still has something to drive.

2018 Toyota Tundra

If you want to drive a full-sized pickup truck, you simply can’t go wrong with a Tundra from the prior generation. The naturally-aspirated V8 is strong and Camry reliable, it’s comfortable, can carry and tow just about anything the average person could want, and it just works. I agonized about selling the Tundra, because it was the most reliable car we owned by a large margin. 

Still, I work from home, I like to drive interesting cars, and apart from the numerous cupholders that I could load-up every morning with my McDonald’s beverage run every morning, I really didn’t need it any more, and I was paying for the privilege of having it sit in my garage. 

Long story short, as mentioned above I went back to driving the X5 – at least for a while – and got nearly what I paid for the Tundra two years and 25,000 miles prior by selling it to Carvana. I still miss it once in a while when I need to haul something, but a Home Depot hourly truck rental is a lot cheaper than a late model Tundra. I’ll buy another pickup one of these days – something with some miles that can just sit outside, but that’s not today’s problem.

2012 Mercedes-Benz E63 Wagon

I shouldn’t have nice things. Well, I shouldn’t have collectible nice things. My issue is that I want to drive the wheels off my cars. When we got the E63 wagon with just over 16,000 miles last year, the idea was to use it sparingly and let it maintain value or even go up a little bit. It was arguably the best 2012-2013 E63 wagon around, certainly the best on the market when I was hunting for one. We are Mercedes wagon people, and with only 209 2012-2013 E63s sold in the US (the last of the rear wheel drive AMG wagons and arguably more fun than the subsequent all wheel drive versions) we decided that this was our kind of collectible, knowing that if we piled the miles onto it we stood to devalue it pretty quickly. Fine if you’re looking for a fun driver, but not so much if you’re treating it as an investment.

I enjoyed every single drive I took adding about 1,000 miles to our uber-wagon, but I hated it just sitting there looking like it wanted to be driven. I’d also noticed that there really didn’t seem to be many of these around, and certainly not in this condition, and thought maybe it would be fun to tap into buddy Dean Laumbach’s BringaTrailer expertise and reputation and roll the dice on selling it – ideally for a little bit of a profit. 

Dean agreed that the car was as nice as one of these was likely to be – at least one that’s not tucked-away in someone’s garage for the foreseeable future – and agreed to list it. The deal was that it would be a no reserve (ACK!) auction and the result would be what it would be. In the end, we made about a 17% profit after associated selling fees and the little bit of money I spent shipping the car from the West Coast to Virginia and putting new tires on it – a testament to Dean’s value and not bad for a brief ownership! The new owner reportedly plans to drive the wheels off it. Power to him!

1983 Mercedes-Benz 240D

I love W123 Mercedes-Benzes. A 123 wagon (1982 280TE, Hong Kong) was my first exposure to the series and the brand when my folks got one new as a company car, and I’ve probably had between 8 and 10 of them over the years since I started buying cars for myself. This car came to me through a FaceBook Marketplace ad on the local Mercedes Club of America FB page, and it just had that chi of being a happy car. It needed some love, but was an amazingly honest car and once sorted made for an excellent – if slow – daily driver. Not a show car, so I didn’t mind taking it out in the weather or running it hard (ish – it’s all relative) on the twisty back roads where we live, but it always got compliments when filling it up or even at the local farmer’s market. 

Part of what I really enjoy about W123s is tinkering with them. They are so straightforward to work on, you can get essentially everything you need either from Mercedes directly or on eBay, and there are videos covering just about everything you’d want to do to one – at least at my skill level. But at a certain point I run out of things to do and then decide to let someone else enjoy them. And that’s exactly what I did a couple of weeks ago when I put a test feeler out on FaceBook Marketplace, got a pretty decent response within hours, and by the next day had a deal to sell the car to a fellow who drove down from Baltimore and for whom this will be his first foray into classic car ownership. I think that a W123 – and a 240D in particular –  is a perfect first classic especially if you want to do your own work, so long as you understand it’s not going to win any races and that you will most definitely have to adapt your driving style to it.  The buyer is out of the country and asked me to hold it for a few weeks, so I still get to see it every day. It’s a long goodbye, but it’s also kind of nice. I’ll be sad to see it drive away fore the last time, but I’m glad the buyer is so enthusiastic about it!

Staying the Course (Or: I haven’t sold them yet)

1983 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC Euro

If I think back through my entire life of car enthusiasm, the Mercedes 126-chassis coupe stands out as a car that I have always wanted – and not just any 126 coupe, but a full European-spec coupe with the higher output, smaller bumpers, flush headlights, and velour upholstery. Our family lived in Asia when these cars were new, and I still vividly remember the first one I ever saw – at my kid sister’s day care – and to say it left an impression on me is putting it mildly. Then Sue Ellen had one on Dallas, and as a huge 10 year-old J.R. Ewing fan, that just sealed it for me. 

Prior to this car, about 15 years ago I bought a 1990 560SEC. It was black on palomino leather, and it was tired. At $3200, it was also what I could afford at the time. The problem was that it was a little rusty, the interior was somewhat worn, and to bring that car back to its former glory would cost probably at least twice what the car would be worth when it was done – so I sold it on and thought once in a while that I should look for another one. 

This car almost literally fell into my lap. I won’t recount the whole story here, but suffice it to say that a good friend knew I loved these cars and had this one enter his sphere, but he wasn’t really in a position (or more accurately “state of mind”) to buy it for himself, so he put me onto it. I hemmed and hawed for about two months before acknowledging that this was absolutely one of my dream cars, and I’d be an idiot not to jump on it. So I did. That was about 2 years ago, and it’s been a great joy to own, drive, and even show. It doesn’t have such low miles that I’m afraid to drive it, but I do use it sparingly and it sits snug in the garage as soon as the salt hits the roads. Will I ever sell it? Heck, as my TTS partner likes to say: “Always for sale: price varies.” At this stage, the price would be obscenely high.

1979 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce

About the time the front corner of my ’79 Alfa got whacked in a parking lot awaiting yet more mechanical work to get it up to snuff as a usable car, I seriously considered throwing-in the towel. My wife was way ahead of me (and still is), but it was covered by insurance, wasn’t *that* bad, and since they were already mixing the paint the accident actually gave me an opportunity to do a custom job to it that was reminiscent of my first Alfa back in high school: to have Hella Talbot-style 4004GT mirrors installed. I’d always loved the look of the fender-mounted mirrors, and it was something that I felt would make the car more mine.

There are only two problems now: 1) I got the car back just in time for the really cold weather, which wouldn’t be so bad except 2) the heater blower motor stopped working. I’m on the waiting list at the shop, being that replacement of that blower is basically a dash-out job that I have neither the patience nor probably the skill to do properly, so I’m not really inclined to drive it much right now. After 13 months ownership under my belt, I an genuinely hoping to drive it next season…

2011 Mercedes-Benz E350 4Matic Wagon

We purchased this wagon in May, 2014 as a certified pre-owned replacement for my wife’s black 2005 E320 4Matic wagon, which itself had replaced her black 2001 E320 4Matic wagon. Admittedly, the two earlier wagons were bought with higher miles and hence started their life with us with a little more wear and tear than this one did, so the idea was that we’d keep this one for a long time. 

If I’m honest, over the years I’ve made mention of upgrading to something newer, more modern, faster, or whatever, but the answer was always “I love my car and you’re not selling it.” Fair enough. I’d just sell something else and go about my life. Recently I spent a fair amount of time replacing switches in the E350 because – I assume due to the caustic hand lotion she frequently applies – the finish seemed to be prematurely wearing off most every switch in reach of the driver’s seat. I’d also replaced the torn front passenger seat lower cushion with a used one sourced from eBay that lived it’s previous life in an E550 sedan – not so easy to find in the proper nappa leather upholstery (versus the more common MB-Tex vinyl) and with the right options. So I was feeling pretty good about the state of the wagon and it was set-up for several more years of my wife not letting me sell it.

Unexpectedly and as I’ll detail below, after 10.5 years driving it nearly every day, my wife (at first begrudgingly) agreed that the E350 made sense as a “hand me down” for our daughter to replace the ailing BMW X5, providing we could find just the right replacement for her to drive. Read on.

The Newest Additions to the Family

2025 Mercedes-Benz E450 All Terrain

We recently took a trip to visit our daughter in the UK, and while we were there ended-up renting a new Volvo XC90. It was very nice for an SUV, and had a lot of technology not present anywhere in our current fleet. Sure, my wife’s 2011 E350 has the massaging “multicontour” driver’s seat, seat heaters and coolers, bluetooth, adaptive headlights and cruise control, but new cars just have more modern tech, don’t they? I’m a big fan of CarPlay, various parking aids like the “Star Trek” viewscreen cameras, and the lane assist was especially useful when hitting the road for a 2 hour drive on the wrong side of the road and car after an overnight transcontinental flight. It also didn’t help that just before the UK trip we’d visited our TTS family in Minnesota, and spent a couple of days riding around in their pretty blue Subaru Outback 3.6R with CarPlay, heated rear seats, and, well, you know, stuff you couldn’t get on a Mercedes wagon in 2014.

When we got back, I got it in my head that I should start looking at newer wagons again, but knowing full well that any potential replacement had to have the absolute correct combination of options an colors to even start a conversation. We’ve become very spoiled with our massaging heated seats (admittedly my fault…)!  I had a couple of false starts, first suggesting that we should look at the Volvo V90 Cross Country (which I think is a very attractive car), then nearly going to look at a black on black Audi A6 Allroad (another very attractive wagon), but the enthusiasm just wasn’t there. I found a couple of certified pre-owned S213 Mercedes All Terrains, I think both 2021 models, but one was grey (“hmm, no”) and one was white (“Hell, no!”). So I kind-of shelved the idea. 

Until I unshelved it late one Friday night and looked at the full inventory at the dealership where we bought the E350 wagon back in 2014. There, in it’s resplendent glory, was a new 2025 S214 E450 All Terrain in dark “Nautical” blue with black interior, the essential multicontour seats, and just about every new car technological wonder you could want (and some you really wouldn’t, but it is what it is these days). The next morning I showed it to my wife, and to my absolute shock she replied that we should go and look at it. Again, we were looking for a solution to the X5 that didn’t require spending any more good money after bad, and she did really like this one – at least on the internet. 

A lot has changed in the years between our 2011 E350 and the 2025 E450, not surprisingly, and what we found when we got to the dealer (and the same excellent sales person we’d bought the E350 and another car from in the past) was a smooth, efficient wagon that fit the bill perfectly. Sure, it has screens as far as the eye can see (yay, extended warranty!) and a few nannies that I could probably do without (but probably also shouldn’t), but it’s also reportedly the last of the Mercedes station wagons so as die-hard wagon people likely represents the last model we’ll be able to buy brand new. We’ve had it for about a week and a half, but so far so good. All those safety baubles and big screens sure do make things easier on my generation X old man eyes…!

2000 Mercedes-Benz E430 Sport

If you’ve been following-along closely, you may have noticed that I sold my daily driver, and haven’t really replaced it. Well actually, I have. I mean, I can drive the E350 wagon (and likely will) until my daughter get’s back from the UK in the spring, but that’s not a permanent solution. Last fall, as my wife and I were contemplating how to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary, she asked “Isn’t there some car you want to go buy and drive home?” Now I’m not always the sharpest tack in the box, but that was an opportunity I couldn’t help but recognize. I’d just sold the E63 wagon so had a little bit of the car budget burning a hole in my pocket, and we do enjoy what have become our annual “fly-in, drive home” road trips in new to us cars. 

I set my autotempest search to look  for Mercedes cars (known quantity) in a certain age range (I think it was 1995-2009 to include W140 sedans, W210 AMGs, W211 CDI diesels, and the earliest of the W221 S-class) and under 50,000 miles. With the profit from the E63 sale, I wanted another relatively low-mile car to fill the void – and that I could reasonably trust to drive home.

This E430 popped-up right away – black on Java leather, heated seats, 44,000 miles, full service history, and rust free. Let me say that again: a W210 Mercedes that was “rust free”. The car was in the greater Chicago area, so I figured that likely meant that rust came with the car at no additional charge, but figured I’d ask the questions anyway. It tuned out that not only did the seller have a full cadre of photos from the key rust trouble spots on the body, but also underneath – and it looked clean enough to eat off. A deal made, we flew out (reserving the right to walk away if the car was not as described) to drive it home – by way of our older daughter’s place just outside Indianapolis. 

And it was just as described. The only problem I saw was 2010 date codes on the still meaty tires. They were noisy but held air and seemed to drive well enough. I’d replace them when I got home, but felt reasonably confident that they’d get us there. And they did. I love this car – and there is a little bit of that ‘I don’t want to drive it in the bad weather’ because it’s that nice, but it didn’t cost what the E63 wagon did – not by a longshot – so I should get over that, knowing that it will live in the garage and at least for the time being I can drive the E350 wagon in the bad weather. Right?

And that about sums up the fleet. Well, excepting one…

Honorable Mention: 1994 Mazda Miata

We bought this 1994 Miata in 1996 as a wedding gift to ourselves. We drove and loved it for two or three years, then realized we needed something that could carry more than the two of us. As luck would have it, my mother-in-law was at the stage in her life where she was ready for her first convertible since the 1962 Chevrolet Corvette she’d had in college – kids all gone and that, so she bought it from us.

She kept it garaged and drove it in the nice weather for the next 21 years, when it suffered an engine failure. We’d always had first right of refusal on it, and at that point she decided that she didn’t want to undertake a project, so she gave it back to us. We had it towed and assessed by a family friend with a small shop in Connecticut, where it didn’t take long to determine that that engine was toast. 

I sourced a replacement engine, and the family friend also took on fixing a small spot on the rocker panel where Connecticut rust had infiltrated – with new steel. And then work slowed to a crawl, first because of health issues, then too much business, then COVID, then health issues again. It’s all legit, but at the same time it’s been nearly 7 years. The most recent report is that the replacement engine seems to have a bad head gasket, so that is being attended to – in between business that actually pays this fellow’s bills. Will we ever drive our wedding car again? We’ll see. If it does come back, I’m not 100% sure where I’ll put it – all the indoor spots are taken!

And THAT is the whole update. Moving forward I’m planning to post periodic “running reports” on the various cars, or when they get sold/replaced. At this point the Alfa is probably the most vulnerable to my short attention span, but maybe the E430 should move on…? I mean, there are folks out there who will ay a premium for a W210 V8 in this kind of condition. Another profit car? But no, I really like that one. For now. 

Stay tuned.