Mercedes Benz C123, Skandinavian Car

This scandinavian Mercedes fanatic built this tidy C123 from a low mileage car that hadn't turned a wheel in years, but he soon put his own mark on it. Mercedes Benz C123, Skandinavian Car. The former gives them a very good excuse to practice driving on snow and ice, which is why Sweden and Finland in particular produces so many world class rally drivers. It is also conducive to beavering away in warm garages over the winter, creating special cars to be enjoyed in the summer.

Finnish car enthusiast Heikki Salo, known to his friends as 'Hessu', has always been passionate about the Mercedes marque. "Mercedes has been my hobby for more than two decades, and I have been driving these cars practically since I got my driving licence," he says. "If you ask my friends about me, most of them would probably describe me as a Mercedes freak!

"The influence came from my father," Hessu continues to explain. "He only drove Mercedes, so there was no escape for me. I was literally born into the three-pointed star, and grew up in and around these cars."

When Hessu, who is now 41 years old, got his driving licence in 1995, he bought a Datsun 100A. This was a lightly built car that did not handle particularly well, whose only saving grace was the fact that front-wheel drive can be an advantage in winter. But within a year, Hessu was driving a W123 280E and never looked back. His passion for the marque quickly got out of hand, and 20 years down the road over 50 Mercedes models have passed through his hands. As the owner of a successful transport company, Hessu's daily driver is a C63 AMG, which he loves for its power and sound, but he has another Mercedes into which he has poured a lot of love and attention.

ANOTHER SIDE OF HESSU'S PASSION FOR THE MARQUE LIES IN CUSTOMISING MERCEDES TO H HIS OWN DESIGNS. "Over the years I have modified nearly 15 cars," he explained. "When an idea comes into my head, I sit down and map out what I want to achieve and then I just get on with it. This is something I do for myself, not for competitions or any other reason. It is a creative streak in me that needs to be satisfied, or as we say in Finland, an itch that needs scratching, and that is how the red 280CE came about.

"I bought the car in 2011," Hessu recalls, tracing the path to where the car is now. "It belonged to a friend, and I had been trying to buy it off him for many years until he finally relented."

Originally metallic blue with blue cloth interior, this classic coupe has the manual gearbox that was common in Germany, from where the car originated, and was imported into Finland in 1998. The image Hessu had for this car was to modify it in a typical 1980s tuning theme with BBS cross-spoke wheels and a matching BBS front spoiler.

When Hessu bought the car, it required a complete overhaul. Bizarrely, it had stood in his friend's barn from 1998, when it was imported from Germany, until 2011 and had never been driven or even started once in that period of rest. That is why Hessu had been trying to buy it all those years, knowing full well that his friend was not using it.

"I had to re-commission the car in a big way as everything had perished," Hessu explained. "I decided it was best to change everything, so it literally received new fuel and electrical components throughout along with a complete new brake system."

The car had its engine replaced with a new unit by Mercedes in 1994 when it was still in Germany, as the original had encountered a terminal problem. The 2.8-litre, twin-cam engine just needed fresh oil, filters and plugs before being started up, and to date has covered around 43,000 miles.

"The car was far from perfect in bodywork condition, as rust had taken its toll on the extremities over the years," tells Hessu. "The original owner had fitted the chromed wheel arch trims that were fashionable in the 1980s, and corrosion had taken hold between these and the bodywork, especially at the rear. But as we were going to literally take the car apart for a bare metal respray in a different colour, this did not really matter."

The car was indeed stripped down completely, all of the corrosion and rust addressed, and the bodywork meticulously rubbed down, primed and given several coats of a lustrous metallic red top coat, specially mixed by the paint shop to Hessu's satisfaction.

WITH 182BHP AND 177LB FT OF TORQUE, THE STOCK ENGINE THRUSTS THIS PILLARLESS VV COUPE TO 0-62 MPH IN 9.9 SECONDS AND ON TO A 124MPH TOP SPEED. While this is a rather yawn inducing performance by today's standards, it is just fine for a period classic and Hessu had no ambitions to make the car go any faster in a straight line.

What Hessu did want to do however, was make it corner with greater security. "The recirculating ball steering from this era is rather vague, so the CE is never going to feel like a sports car, but my objective was to tame the body roll and give the car better handing and road holding,"

The German tuners of this era naturally used Bilstein dampers and lowering springs, but this put a bit of an edge on the ride. From his experience with previous cars he had modified, Hessu knew that Koni dampers had the suppler ride he was looking for. In standard form, the 280CE sits high on its 14-inch wheels, and this is the main reason why so much air gets under the nose, lifting it even further and changing the suspension geometry for the worse at speed. The combination of H&R lowering springs and uprated dampers dropped the ride height by a massive 50mm, while the BBS spoiler further reduces lift over the front axle.

In the parlance of the alloy wheel industry, the car underwent a plus two wheel and tyre change, going from 14-inch to 16-inch diameter. Sized 9.5J and 10.5J by 16-inch front and rear respectively, and shod with 205/50R16 and 245/45R16 Nexen tyres, these lightweight, three-piece BBS RS alloys feature the gold painted centres and deep offsets that were popular in the 1980s.

You would have thought that this increase over the factory 14-inch classic bundt' style forged alloy wheels would required wheel arch clearance work, but because these are BBS wheels they have been properly designed with the right offset to fit the car out of the box, and come with German TUV certification.

The other half of the story is the fact that cars from the era were so under-tyred that there is usually plenty of room in their arches. You just have to make sure that the offsets of the aftermarket wheels are properly calculated.

ITH THE BODYWORK FINISHED, HESSU TURNED HIS ATTENTION TO THE INTERIOR THE BASIC CLOTH SEAT TRIM WAS REPLACED BY CREAM LEATHER, WHICH DELIVERS THE INTENDED PLUSH, UPMARKET LOOK AND FEEL HESSU WAS AFTER. This work was carried out by Ticabo, which also made the bespoke carpet mat set that protects the new carpets. The factory steering wheel was re-manufactured with wood trim and the Pioneer cassette player was retained to keep the period feel elsewhere.

The project took about a year from start to finish, but as you can see from the pictures it was worth it, and the car is a spectacularly good example of what a well modified 280CE would have looked like when new in the early to mid-1980s. Hessu is justifiably proud of this car, which he considers to be the pinnacle of the classic Mercedes-Benz he has owned and modified over the many years.

Sources:

Mercedes Enthusiast September 2019

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