I paid $4700 for an '83 240D, although it had just had a $1500 paint job and complete A/C replacement (ducts and all)...

It's slow, it blows a small bit of white smoke behind when I'm accelerating, but it's beautiful and imposing and its a great ride.

 

As diesel's go it is +- at its half life point if it has hadbeen anything close to maintained (i.e. air filter changed, oil change...)
The tranny will always shiftfirmly nature of the beast. Anything that can withstand being repeatedly SNATCHED into low gear @ 70+ mph and not have mechanical malfunction for 4 years I say go for it!!

These cars are as close to indestructable as they get.

By the way a 300D will hold 8 full kegs and one driver with no problem!
I abused mine to say the least. It went to rodeo's most weekends with myself and 3 other roughstock riders and all our riggin's(&cooler)!
P.S.

 

Newbie here but I have to jump in on the price of these cars. I've been looking for a while and hunting on ebay and local craigslist for a couple of months. Just bought a 1982 300D T. Anything that had a body with minimal rust was starting around 3k as long as it was on the road without a transmission problem or no working AC. I've been checking all of my watched auctions and decent 240s and 300s- anything with a 123 body in decent shape is $3-5k.Mint ones with less than 100k going for over $7k. I just drove down Lancaster pike in Radnor PA today and saw a 240d with 100k in automatic by the side of the road with a 4sale sign on it. I doubled back and they were asking $3,200. It has some rust on the front under the bumper. Likewise an auto '79 auto 240d with 300k on local craigslist has an asking price of $3k. Just throwing that out for reference...