1979 Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9

My Mercedes 450 SEL 6. 9 which I have owned for over 10 years. Very low ownership as I am effectively the second owner; many 6. 9s, sadly, ended up in the hands of people who didn’t look after them as they did become relatively cheap and ended in the wrong hands.

Not Ralf. I bought him as my company car when I moved to Melbourne, Australia. Yes, the company said I could either have a new car or an allowance to buy my own. As I wasn’t really interested in what they were offering and much prefer older cars (I took my Citroen SM with me) I started looking round. I’d always fancied a 6. 9 having owned a W116 450 but most cars available in the UK were more or less junk as W116s do like to rust so one never turned up. But when I looked online there were two available so I went to have a look. One was OK and one was stunning, Ralf. He had been bought new by the sellers father, for the price of 4 decent houses he told me and was used for about 15 years by him until he died. He was a very rich man and had the car serviced at MB Melbourne exactly to the book, I have the stamped service book and did check with them and they remembered the car well. After he died, there was apparently a very unseemly 10 year fight over the inheritance as he owned lots of property in the centre of Melbourne and there were big numbers involved. Towards the end of this, when some of the property was being sold, the agents said to the son I dealt with, “what do you want to do with the car in the private underground carpark?” which they had all forgotten about. So the son had it recovered by the same Melbourne dealership that had alway serviced it and told them to recommission it. Well, they went a bit crazy, changing all rubber hoses, the spheres (at $500 each at Oz MB prices, they can actually be had from Febi Bilstien who provided them to MB for £70) and a gigantic service and 20 grand later he was as good as new. Well, as soon as the son started using it the family found out and they had it seized and sold so they could have their cut. And it was sold to me.

I used the car regularly for two years, then we moved north of Sydney and I used him less as I was travelling all over Oz and away a lot, but we still had great trips at the weekend to the wineries and the like.

Time came for work after about 4 years (I obvious serviced the car several times before this) as I wanted to change all the belts and the HP pump was weeping very slightly. At the same time I replaced much of the vacuum line with the correct colour coded MB stuff which is almost impossible to find in all colours as it was getting brittle as well as the rubber unions and funnily enough most everything worked that little bit better as vacuum controls almost everything important. I also deleted the air pump which was part of the Australian spec cars for emissions regulations for 1979 and obtained the correct parts to effectively change the car to European spec and the car now makes Euro power, uses less fuel, and again, just runs better. That was about 10, 000 km ago and I’ve done nothing but services since. When the time came to come home, Ralf came too.

Ralf is an easy 9/ 10 car and has never had any bodywork ever and has no rust at all. The paint is just about flawless, the interior is very good in parchment leather and the zebrano bright and clear. The only issues are a cracked dash top, it’s not bad, but it has two cracks from front to back, the rev counter stopped working 6 months ago, but I’m working on that and the front and rear windscreen rubbers are perished, but I received new FB ones this morning so I’ll change them. (This is now done and I have pictures of the windscreen out showing zero corrosion underneath)

Also, interestingly, I managed to find a set of steel 6. 3 wheels which are the correct size and some trims which I had painted the correct colour which I prefer so I am running them at the moment. I obviously have the Bunts too, but with no tyres. The tyres are the correct Michelin XWX tyres, but they are a bit old.

So, there we go. He pulls like a train and they are not as thirsty as you might think and I will miss him terribly, but realistically, there is no point me re registering him in Spain as he’s RHD (yep, Oz is a colony and drives on the correct side of the road) and I reckon there must be 50 LHD cars for every remaining RHD one. I have the NOVA and almost registered the car in the UK, but we relocated here to Galicia before I finished doing it.

So if you want one of the best RHD 6. 9s, look no further.

Let’s talk.

At someone’s request, I have taken some pictures of the usual rust spots and as you can see, it’s just about factory fresh, especially the door bottoms which you can see, still have the factory rust proofing wax on them. Also, pictures of the windscreen flange when the windscreen was out.