What's your experience with used cars angel?
The car you are trying to buy is consider to be "bulletproof", but in case you didn't realize - it is 23 years old. Don't think you can get extended warranty.

So bottom line is, that with good luck the car might run for another 20 years with only worry about rubber parts
and with bad luck you can blow the transmission on the 2nd day after paying for it and face the repair cost likely higher, than purchase price.
It might still be worth putting rebuild transmission in it, but are you prepared for such an option?

 

Experience with used cars? Well, I'm 47 and have only had 2 new cars in my life, neither of which I kept until paid off. My daily driver is a 25 year old Honda, my Dodge is 9 with 240,000miles on it, both have manual transmissions . I realize there are many unknowns and no guarantees but I am trying to narrow the odds of the latter of your mentioned 2 possibilities. I was trying to see if anyone knew of possible easy fix items particular to the Benz automatics of the early eighties that it could be and I would not worry as much about. If necessary, considering the overall condition of the rest of the car, I could put in another tranny and still come out on top for the price he is asking. It seems that the Benz parts are pricy and possibly rarer to find but probably no worse than my '63 Ford Super Dexta with it's Perkins diesel engine. There are other items like driver door lock not working (vac. issue, could be tranny related?), no heat, a/c not cooling, top piece of antennae missing, rear door hinges bent or disconnected, cracked windshield, some rust on lower panels from PA roads, etc. but overall the only real concern is the tranny, thus the questions. Even if I already owned the car I would still have the questions. Thanks, Steve