Cynthia D. emailed us the other day about a friend who has a large collection of Mercedes-Benzs. We figured her friend, John, might have a dozen or so cars, but it turned out to be closer to a hundred. John’s health isn’t what it used to be though so he has decided it is time to liquidate. Cynthia has been trying to help him catalog everything, but he lives in a remote part of Texas, so it’s going to take a while. Over the next month, parts of the collection will be featured exclusively here on Barn Finds so this is just a preview of what’s to come…
There is such a wide variety of models in John’s collection that it would be tough to list everything in just one post. There is a 190SL hiding in one of the barns, but sadly he has already made it clear that it isn’t for sale. Perhaps as he sees some of the other cars go to good homes, he will have a change of heart? Even if you don’t want a complete car, he has a ton of parts and is willing to part with them.
John doesn’t know much about the internet, so Cynthia is going to handle all the communications. We would normally be concerned about an arrangement like this, but it seems that both she and John want to see as many of these cars go to good homes as possible. John worked as a Mercedes mechanic and acquired a number of cars from customers who couldn’t afford the repairs, so most aren’t running and will need work.
Be sure to check back over the next few weeks, as we will be getting more photos and information shortly. Since we currently don’t have a complete list of what is here, let us know which models you see that you might be interested in. We want to thank John and Cynthia for sharing this with us and we look forward to helping these cars find some new caretakers!
I would not call it a collection, just a junkyard
One mans junk is another mans treasure.
Wow, I could spend hours here. A collection likes this has many memories, bet he never lets go of the 190SL.
Might be some interesting stuff hidden away in there. Wonder what remote part of Texas these are located. Live in OK and might make the trip to see whats there.
This “remote” part of Texas looks pretty green, so possibly near Louisianna/Arkansas.
Looks like a junkyard of late model 4 door sedans that are very expensive to fix.
Hope there are some good parts in there. I don’t see a lot of diamonds, but a lot of “rough.”
Ah, but a whole lot of parts, that’s a lot of MB right there.
Thats what I was thinking. East TX or maybe in the Ark-La-Tex.
Thanks for this – i’ll be there – do we know the location in TX?
I just don’t get people buying large numbers of cars and then parking them in an open field. Must be some sort of shopping compulsion or control issue. Like Seth said earlier, this is a junkyard for the most part.
You choose your own destiny,
That is still one of the few things we are free to chose.
Some people like to do that (own acreage and use it)
others live in a hole in the wall, packed in like sardines on top of each other in Dana Point……
Not a junkyard. Sheesh. If I had the space and was able to save these cars from an owner who didn’t know what they had, or had no means of connecting with other enthusiasts, you can be damn sure I’d stockpile them on my property. Try keeping just two vintage BMWs running like I do, and you quickly have a garage full of “just in case” inventory. Grab stuff when you see it, when it’s cheap. Use it when you need it.
Cynthia, thanks for reaching out to the community. Don’t mind the armchair quarterbacks. Hopefully, BarnFinds can connect you with the right people to see that these parts and cars live on in others’ projects.
yep……..junk yard. Isn’t there a T.V show where the subjects are referred to as hoarders?
Now, if these were old Loti………..I would call the guy a genius. :)
& just how many Loti’s do we have, roughly?
i wish i was close, would be nice to see in person. look at all the parts in the pictures also. great great find. this is going to be a lot of work for some and fun for others. i’m glad it is going to be on BF.
Call it what you may. It’s certainly a solid resource. I’m sure there are some beauties in there that will be saved. I’ve already spotted a few. This is a great find for all mercedes enthusiasts and restorers.
100 cars.That’s 400 doors in this collection.
I have one Mercedes in my sewing machine collection…………………
Agree to disagree, I guess. But I can’t think of many ways better to spend a Saturday morning. Wake up, walk outside with my coffee, rummage through an old W123 or two, tinker with my garage-kept SLs or 190E Cosworth, and just smile knowing it’s all mine. It’s not going to a junkyard where every moron with a wrench tears dashboards apart to get a cheap radio or gouges a fender ripping out a leaky strut assembly – only to leave it there, damage path intact.
Spend any time in a junkyard and you’ll see the stark difference between having a yard full of cars only YOU get to tinker with versus a muddy parking lot where the dimmest and dullest go there to play “Pretend Mechanic.”
YES, you’ve hit it right on the nose.
It’s like you read my mind, down to the ‘pretend mechanic’ in the “we don’t f***ing care junk yards”……
The other day I came across a 45 year old Mercedes in a self serve junk yard.
The last guy had hacked up a $1200 part trying to take out a $50 part, what a bunch of careless and mostly ignorant morons…..
I’d be happy to have what they would bring in scrap metal alone. Maybe he’s selling them off to pay for the 190’s restoration.
Ok, this is funny;
“John worked as a Mercedes mechanic, so most aren’t running and will need work.”
Mark, did you read the sentence in between the two that you combined?
I believe that is how Josh it before, but he has since edited it. The wording was sort of funny actually.
This.. makes me sad to see cars in this condition.
So whatever cars were abandoned by there owners as to expensive to repair or not worth trading in he got?
Some where taken in trade for work, some were just abandoned, some he bought for himself, and some he got as parts cars.
been there done that. you would be surprised how fast the vehicles accumulate!
Hi Josh,
Just want to let you know i will pay top dollar for any W109 rusted, non rusted, junked, running any condition in the collection let me know via email. thanks in advance, i have 20 6.3s and 3 4.5 300 sel stored away in a dry warm building – just so you understand i understand what you have there.
Josh, looking for a running/driving 220S Ponton, anything in the collection?
Thanks
Maybe if one was a gullwing I “might’ be interested. The rest can be crushed. Owned a couple new ones over the years (wife’s) and they are not worth half the hype you hear about them.
Sorry, but the typical ‘layman’ of a Mercedes owner’s response.
You must have bought a cheap model after 1990 and not maintained it. And those generally tend to be junk, as in all brands.
The ones picking up in value are the S-class vehicles, generally over 30 years old mostly 2 door cars,
As for the ‘Gullwing’ and you “might” be interested comment:, sorry again, but there would be 20 “pebble beach” type flippers snatching that up before you could pronounce the m in might…..
Spot on, Horse. At some point in the nineties, MB stopped building to a standard and started building to a price.
I have always adored the SEC model, personal luxury at its finest. The mid-80’s come to mind 380, 500, 560.
2005 E500 and & a 2008 E350, Neither one impressed me a bit and both had crappy trade-in value. But of course I am a “layman” who no longer throws his money away on foreign iron.
@Don
Spot on yourself.
W126 and w124 were the last decent cars going 300000 miles plus at this time and going a lot farther with a few repairs.The 190 series were a sign of things to come. I see cars from the mid nineties looking beautiful in junkyards, too complex to keep running.
@Jeff
Good taste and good sense. My secret pick to be the next big winner in the classic market 5 years from now !!
@Capt546
as mentioned above, by the mid nineties the boat had sailed.
Especially for the American market (Mercedes-) build was replaced by bling, because GM etc got away with it. Throw away cars !
So now you’ve switched from bad to worse, good luck with that.
The change in the classic, over-engineered Benz to today’s cars happened when Lexus appeared. Almost immediately, you saw a “Tcherman engineer” bemoaning what “Dezihners” had done to “my Mercedes.” The guy designing the alternator no longer went to accounting and said, “figure out what we need to charge to pay for this,” but the accountant said, “This is your budget for an alternator.”
GM, making baroque pimpmobiles on Chevy chasis with GM diesels and V-8-7-5 motors, had already made itself irrelevant to modern luxury buyers.
I hope a good use is found for many parts, and maybe there are some diamonds in what is generally a junk yard.
If it were nearby, might stop by to look, as you never know.
But to “a remote part of Texas?” I’ll hope to see anything good on eBay, and gladly pay the guy who went to the trouble to harvest it.
The problem is when you put a few like brand cars together in a field they mate & before you know it, like rabbits, they are all over the place.
I had a 190sl almost identical to that. Wife made me sell it 2 years ago to pay for some house upgrades and I have been kicking myself ever since. First thing I am doing when I sell my house is tracking down a beat up old 190 and bringing it back to life. Very interested to see this collection featured in the coming months.
That is truly grounds for junking the wife, just kidding.
or kicking one-self for letting it happen, just kidding, also
I love old Mercedi.
This will become a feeding frenzy and a ‘hunt for Gullwings’-wannabees flocking there, if the address got out.
To save the gentleman’s and Cynthias sanity, you really would have to separate the ‘jewels’ from the ‘restorable’ cars,to the parts cars and the parts piles as you would be dealing with separate type of buyers.
I would be a rare case, that I would be interested in ALL, but the distance would make it difficult. Josh has my address, THANKS and Good Luck
My grandfather had around 20 or so mid sixties to early seventies benzes around the perimeter of his lawn up until the early ninties when he romoved bits he needed for two projects and scrapped the rest as the county got on his tail.
My wife and I have had 3 Mercedes in the last 3 years. A 2009 C300, a 2011 GLK350 and a 2011 ML350. Ton of problems with the C300. The other 2 have been fine.
That being said I am a MB guy and the problems with the new ones would never stop me from owning an older one.
Its going to be interesting to watch this story unfold in the coming days. Once I find out where it is I am going to try to be there when the sale starts.
WOW this guy has about as many MB’s as I do, and I thought I was the only one that horded old MB;s
My ex- has a ’93 400SEL that she bought nine years ago for $9000. Original sticker was over $80K. The quality of everything on that car is mind-blowing. I’m not as familiar with the later MB’s, but in general I still think a roughly 10-year-old S-Class is about the best used car deal going.
Most of these cars are probably destined to become parts donors and then crushed, but that was probably their fate anyway given the circumstances under which the owner picked them up. It’s just fun to see hoards/collections like this still out there.
While were on the MB subject “Top Gear” just came out with the 50 greatest cars of the past 20 years. If I know you guys this will be a “highly debatable” list as they rate a FIAT 500 before a Lamborghini Gallardo, Ferrari Enzo and a Aston Martin Vantage, have at it guys…ALL comments welcomed and appreciated (Rated “R” mature audiences only) lol
http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/20yearsofcars-mag-promo?j=100129&e=b2Rtd2lAYXR0Lm5ldA==&l=30_HTML&u=5959854&mid=7001780&jb=196&cm_mmc=ExactTarget-_-email-_-TOP_GEAR_FLEX_NLT_HEADER_2013-09-13-_-email&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=TOP_GEAR_FLEX_NLT_HEADER_2013-09-13
*NOTE* “Top Gear” wasn’t slanted towards gas-mizing econo boxes as they did have a Bugatti Veyron as #1…
they must have chosen only cars that were available in the UK
and therein lies the problem,,,,,,,,,,
Thanks for the response to Josh’s prelim article. Looks like there is some interest. The location will not be disclosed as John is already overwhelmed. Most likely I will have a very experienced Mercedes person staying with John on the property to help catalogue, photograph, do shipping for parts and even do some repairs. This is a big project. I want to make it very very clear…the W121 190SL in the barn is NOT for sale. There are in fact a few collectible cars there that are worth buying that I am not going to list publicly, you have to contact me for those. Some of the cars run, some need minor stuff, some need more work than others, most are parts cars. There is one W111 very rusty coupe there that would make a good art piece, there is one Binz Benz van, a few Heckflosse’s, some Ponton’s, no 6.3’s or 6.9’s. There is a couple 129’s, 126’s, several 107’s, 4.5’s…I’ll send Josh the list soon. But if you have an interest please do not try to contact John. He is too old and can not handle this. Simple as that. I’m just here to help.
I have to say, that you are a nice person to do this for him, and are handling it well.
Good luck with the dispersal, Cynthia. I hope whoever takes the binz Benz and any other rarities shares it with Barnfinds
If you are interested in buying/investing in the collector types pre-war, W24, W198, W188, W187, W121, W111, W112, W113, W100 please contact Josh for my email address for price and photos.
This must be like Heaven…;)!!
Wish i could be there. !! : )
Old good Mercedes should be taken care of like a child!! ..;)
Keep up!!
Not much of a desirable collection unless he has 111,113 or 190sl or 300sl for sale. More like a junk yard full of mercedes.
Just another “Pagoda-clown”.
Since this article was posted, he has added another 60+ cars. There are a couple of M100’s (6.3/6.9 basically unusable wrecks, motors are good), some moldy 111 coupes. He might have some 113 parts. I bought all the Pagoda’s a couple years ago. There is one 190SL in the barn for sale (see picture above). The 300SL’s are gone long time ago. A few Pontons and Heckflosse’s. There is an Evo1 crashed in the front not too bad, and is restorable. There are several W107’s – SL’s and SLC’s, W129’s (500SL and 600SL), W126 560SEC, W124, W114’s, on and on….and a couple of nice 450SEL 4.5’s. Email me for pix. Tons of parts and parts cars on 57 private acres. It’s not a junk yard. It’s all at his home on his personal property, it’s his backyard. No Chevy’s, no Ford’s, nothing American ~ just Mercedes only.
Since this article was posted, he has added another 60+ cars. There are a couple of M100’s (6.3/6.9 basically unusable wrecks, motors are good), some moldy 111 coupes. He might have some 113 parts. I bought all the Pagoda’s a couple years ago. There is one 190SL in the barn for sale (see picture above). The 300SL’s are gone long time ago. A few Pontons and Heckflosse’s. There is an Evo1 crashed in the front not too bad, and is restorable. There are several W107’s – SL’s and SLC’s, W129’s (500SL and 600SL), W126 560SEC, W124, W114’s, on and on….and a couple of nice 450SEL 4.5’s. Email me for pix. Tons of parts and parts cars on 57 private acres. It’s not a junk yard. It’s all at his home on his personal property, it’s his backyard. No Chevy’s, no Ford’s, nothing American ~ just Mercedes only.
Shot of the Evo. Interior is perfect.