Half a Million Kilometres and Still Ticking: Driving a W123 Diesel in Africa

There’s a car parked outside that has covered more than half a million kilometres on one of the harshest continents on earth. And it’s still going. Not preserved in a garage. Not trailered to shows. Working.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend a week with it, and I want to tell you what that’s actually like — because the story of these cars in Africa is a different story from the one you hear in Europe.

First, You Have to Wait

One of the privileges of driving a W123 diesel is that you can’t just get in and dash off. You have to glow it. Quite a bit, in advance. I said to my son the other day: this is probably the worst getaway car ever built.

But that wait heightens the anticipation. You sit there, you turn the key, and you listen for the five-cylinder to catch. When it does, it’s butter smooth. Not quiet, exactly. But smooth in a way that modern four-cylinders rarely manage.

The engine in question is the OM617 — the infamous 3.0-litre five-cylinder diesel. No turbo on this one. No intercooler. No funny bits and pieces. Just direct injection and pure engineering, the way Mercedes used to do it.

Where My Story With the W123 Begins

About twenty years ago, I got to drive a 230E automatic quite often. It belonged to someone I knew. And honestly? I didn’t appreciate it. Compared to everything else, it felt lethargic. The autobox was slow. The engine wasn’t peppy. None of it excited me.

But there was this understanding, even then, that this was a different kind of car. A completely different quality basis. That was about as much as I could gather at the time.

I didn’t know that more than twenty years later, my own W124 would have exactly the same engine as that 230E — 136 horsepower, 2.3-litre, eight-valve inline four. And I didn’t know that engine, that car, everything about it, would excite the mickey out of me the way it does now.

Funny how that works.

The Heroes Are the Ones Still Working

Here’s what I’ve come to believe about these cars, and it’s the reason I wanted to make this video.

In Europe and everywhere else, you’ll find the exceptions — old classics, exotics, kept in a garage under a car cover, moved every now and then. That’s fine. I get it.

But I love the ones out in the field. The ones that need to be at work.

In Africa, these old Mercedes are the Swiss Army knives of motoring. They can do just about anything. They get revived, patched up, fixed up, rejuvenated — sometimes with parts from other cars entirely. That’s why it’s very difficult to find a complete, perfect version of one out here. They’ve been patched together over decades.

And that’s exactly what makes them special to me. Not pristine condition. Not 100% originality. Who cares about that, really?

It’s about the adventures they’ve undergone and how they’ve made it through, patched up and all.

This particular car has done more than half a million kilometres. By the time my friend Marcus bought it, the speedometer had already given up. It stopped at 369,617 — which happens to be close to the engine code, funnily enough. And it just stayed there.

Learning to Drive the OM617

The OM617 is an engine you need to get used to. You need to learn the car. It’s an occasion. It’s anticipation. It’s a game of knowing what the car does, what it can do, and where its limitations are.

Because you have to find the sweet spot. Otherwise it’ll frustrate the crap out of you.

These cars aren’t fast. From the factory, they had a chilled 0-100 time of about 17 and a half seconds. That’s not a typo.

But here’s the thing. Once the engine is warm, once you understand how it works, you can drive it super torquey. I tested it out on a quiet road. Second gear. Third. Fourth at 30 km/h.

Fourth gear. At 30 km/h. That’s remarkable.

The engine produces 172 Newton metres of torque at 2,400 RPM. That sounds high for a diesel, but there’s heaps of it everywhere in the rev range. Maximum torque doesn’t mean you have to wait until you get there to have a good dollop of pull.

Power is up to about 88 horsepower in the facelifted model, and peak power arrives at 4,400 RPM. That surprised me too — it’s a lot for an old big diesel. But when I drove with Marcus from Munich to Italy, across the mountains toward France and down to Barcelona, he was driving a 190 diesel with only 72 horsepower and a four-speed gearbox. Quite revvy.

I was nervous. You don’t drive a diesel like that, I thought. But you can. If they made peak power available at 4,000 RPM, it’s probably because you’re allowed to go there and fetch it. It’s not something you have to do. It’s just an option.

What Modern Cars Have Taken From Us

Nowadays, we’re so used to cars that can do everything. You can buy almost any set of wheels with a tiny 900cc engine, and it’ll still do 160 or 170 km/h. 0-100 will almost always be under twelve seconds.

And in a sense, that’s made cars a bit boring to me. They don’t have that much personality anymore. I’m not trying to diss anything — it’s just that a lot of cars feel like they’re being produced in order to exist, rather than to be driven.

That’s a shame. But on the other hand, it makes cars like this stand out so much more.

Modern cars have super fluidity, but it’s shallow. Here, you’re really involved. Engaged. You need to know what you’re doing. You need to plan ahead. You’re part of the driving, not just a passenger in a machine that does everything for you.

The things in life where the intensity of the experience was heightened — those are the things that matter to us. Take that away, and we ask ourselves why we exist.

Living With It

I’ve had this car for about a week. Everything by default gets compared to the W124, which is my own car. And now I’m burning with curiosity to know what a W124 with a 2.0-litre diesel feels like — same engine, only 72 horsepower, five-speed gearbox.

But the gear change on this W123 is even better than on my W124. Every gear sits as perfectly as hitting a bullseye. It’s beautifully orchestrated.

The gauges, on the other hand, have minds of their own. The speedometer doesn’t work at all, which is fine because it stopped at such a satisfying number. The heat gauge is showing something around 50 degrees, which can’t be right. The oil pressure sits at three, which is perfect. The fuel gauge still shows more than full after I don’t know how many kilometres.

The clutch feels right. The diesel pedal takes your input in a way that’s astonishing. There’s a harmony to it, a little marriage, like everything was discussed beforehand.

And the gear changes are harsh and hard, but with no play. No bonanza effect. Just solid engineering.

Ready for the Next 500,000

I can’t stop being amazed at how an engine like this, half a million kilometres later, still ticks over the way it does. It’s just clockwork. Beautiful.

One thing I learned on this drive: the older diesels don’t always switch off with the key. There’s a stop valve under the hood. You pull it, and that’s how you end the ride.

Which feels appropriate, somehow. These cars don’t do anything the easy way. They do it the thorough way. The deliberate way. The way that lasts.

Ready for the next half a million kilometres? Mechanically, this one still is.

And honestly, I wouldn’t bet against it.