Vellum Venom: 1984 Mercedes-Benz 280E (W123)

Like many products, cars evolve over time, and design rooted in traditional art eventually transitions into the types of commercial design we consume on a regular basis in modern society. One person who saw this move firsthand was Friedrich Geiger, head of the styling department at Mercedes-Benz. He had a front-row seat to the party, as he was responsible for everything from the 500K touring cars of the 1930s to the minimalist W123 Executive car presented here.

While traditional artistic expressions and craftsmanship techniques (like separate fenders and prominent grilles) made way for a commercial design aesthetic by the time of the W123’s introduction, there’s clearly room for both on a modern vehicle. There’s a delicate balance to be struck, for the same reasons why tail fins and massive chrome features made way for aerodynamic and streamlined lines in mid-century Detroit. Perhaps Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a professor at the German Bauhaus school, said it best:

[Design] is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space.

If there was a better sentence to wrap all the needs of modern motoring in a highly industrialized society, well, I haven’t heard it yet. So let’s see how it applies to the famously strong and staid lines of the W123, as we run it across the vellum for a closer look.

Apparently, Moholy-Nagy was one of the folks who pushed the Bauhaus from a traditional art school to the industrial design schools we see today. We see a similar balance of tradition and modernism in the W123’s face. There’s the classic grille with organic shapes, resting like a crown atop modern, sleek, long horizontal lines. As we dig deeper into this vehicle, we’ll see those horizontal lines are a significant theme that carries throughout.

Like a pre-war classic with a bold grille and an expressive, power bulge hood, the W123’s front end is dominated by this design feature. It’s contouring spills into the hood, and proudly rests above the full-length bumper. Of course, this particular W123 is a German-spec model with playfully thin bumpers. These less-functional items “visually” create whisper-quiet noises to alert its presence on the W123’s front end.

Doing so lets the grille truly shine, as it would on a pre-war car. And the W123 is far from a modern vehicle—the vertical gap between the grille and the headlights/front fascia proves it—subtle though it may be, that and the horizontal cut lines on the hood are the last vestiges of the separated fenders of yore.

No such gap exists in the highly visible space between the grille and the hood, and the contouring of both panels sing in perfect harmony, like the grille/radiator and hood lines seen in prior generations. Of course the grille is also bolted to the hood, but the gap seen at the fascia isn’t as neatly sorted as it is on the later W126.

Surfacing details truly delight on this grille, starting off with the hood ornament’s sharp bends and three-pointed star design that’s synonymous with prestige. The blue-hued grille emblem adds old-world charm, with complex textures and a forward thrusting relief pattern for the three-pointed star. The delicate work here projects a feeling of speed and authority, something you’d never experience on the front fascia of a cheaper German brand.

Mercedes-Benz sedans (of both the two- and four-door varieties) used to have a unique grille texture with chrome delineators (3, in this case) within a sea of gray horizontal slats. The texture was not flat, instead, it met at a “V” in the center of the grille. (Vertical support slats took a back seat to the horizontal stuff, of course.) This was a great, deep-rooted design heritage that sadly died in 2007.

Nowadays every Mercedes grille is either of the sporty SL-style or sports a reductive horizontal texture that looks significantly cheaper than what’s here on the W123. Progress is one thing, but shedding brand DNA in a world of prestigious upstarts with a mere 30-something (Lexus) and 10-ish (Tesla) years of snob appeal is a loss for design—there’s a rather urgent need for this distinctive vintage texture to come back.

The grille’s fine-toothed horizontal lines are replicated in the European headlight assemblies, and this accent cheats the wind by hiding behind a glass cover. (US-spec models, seen in the beginning of the article, have traditional sealed beam headlights but still employ strong horizontal lines.) It’s a slick implementation, and it does a fantastic job integrating the strong horizontal chrome bumper elements.

Below the bumper are even more horizontal lines, and their black paint makes them invisible against the open space needed for engine cooling. Exposed fasteners point to a simpler time, but nobody will know because the W123’s lower valence is fairly low to the ground and tucked slightly beneath the bumper.

The meeting point between lower valence and fender (side) is surprisingly sleek, but wraparound, single-piece plastic parts were years away. Traditional craftsmanship isn’t a liability, especially when all the horizontal lines above make it very hard to concentrate on this seam.

Curves are thankfully employed in a rational way, ensuring the W123 has a proper balance of hard and soft contours. Americans do not get to enjoy the triangulated, European H4-style light patterns cast into a glass face, but the gentle curves of both the bumper and turn signal do a fine job encapsulating the horizontal lines. There’s even a secondary rubber seal between the body and the bumper that adds both curves and straight lines at the same time, depending on your vantage point!

The contrast between curvy bumper parts, upright lights, and gentle curves in the hood is also seen in the bodyside molding. This bit of rubber and chrome starts off as a bullet, and then becomes a very, very long line. The texture present in the turn signal is noteworthy, but more pronounced when you see it on the rear lights.

This front end and the long, integrated lines along the coachwork translated into a drag coefficient of 0.42. That’s deplorable by today’s standards, but it’s good for a car designed around 1971 with little to no computer assistance. For context, the seemingly sleek C3 Corvette Stingray started at a Cd of 0.503, only going to 0.443 after revised fascias were installed in 1980.

No wonder the W123 drove so well at highway speeds. Or any other speed, for that matter: short overhangs, featherweight alloy wheels, and a comfy ride height suggest this vehicle was made for a variety of road conditions, and could handle a twisty section with ease. This is in stark contrast to the 1972 Continental Mark IV we Vellum’d in the past, as its front overhang suggests interstate highway cruising was a priority.

The iconic “bundt” wheels are a forged aluminum alloy affair, and the casting has the aggressive contouring of a bundt cake pan. While cars like the 1974 Ford Gran Torino Elite and 1975 Continental Mark IV had optional forged alloys, their casting was a rudimentary bowl lacking the complex cooling holes you see in these bundts. The Malaise Era was a tough one for good reason, and items like these wheels prove Mercedes was an engineering powerhouse at the time.

Rarely do I get to Vellum Venom a vehicle with a factory-correct set of tires. The basic sidewall design is free of geometric Easter Eggs, and that tread pattern likely never met the approval of a computer program. (These are all-new reproduction tires, by the way.)

While black paint is generally great at hiding the sins of car designers, the dark rocker panels cannot hide the round jack/lift holes for emergency tire changes. At least there’s a strong chrome molding between painted surfaces, an aggressive bend above it, and an impressive amount of dash-to-axle.

And that dash-to-axle ensures a proper amount of hood length, with plenty of real estate for a prestigious hood bulge. Well, by European standards: This is inadequate for an Oldsmobile Cutlass, much less a Cadillac Fleetwood.

Here’s another “issue” in terms of the W123 being a luxury vehicle: behold the open, exposed cowl. We saw this problem with cars like the badge-engineered Lincoln Versailles, but not the properly-luxurious 1976 Cadillac Seville. Probably not a big deal outside of America, but there’s a reason why the Seville did a fantastic job threading the needle between American and imported luxury … and the covered cowl played an important role in that car’s design.

The replacement (W124) E-class Mercedes matured appropriately, as its hood covered up the functional bits on the cowl, like the (partially fake) intake ducting, and windshield wipers.

But the W123 was a design from a different era, and there’s still delight to be found. Behold the single and dual nozzle windshield washer jets: two nozzles for the driver and one for the passenger. Take that, passengers!

Another look at this luxurious hood contouring, which could be significantly more elegant if the cowl was covered like a Caddy.

While the W123 looks great from far away, the convoluted cowl design is shamefully out of step with how American luxury cars were made since the early 1970s. The exposed wipers look cheap, the window seals are gigantic, and there’s an aerodynamic panel attached atop the A-pillar. The latter is clunky and feels like a tacked-on solution, but likely reduces NVH even if it creates a little cavern for fingers to poke into.

While this A-pillar extension also doubles as a fantastic rain gutter, we are better off putting designs like this in the rearview mirror. (There’s a good chance I’d have more positive thoughts on this part if I lived in Germany at the time, but speed limit-free autobahns in quiet luxury cars were not part of my upbringing.)

Kooky spoiler aside, the A-pillar is delightfully small, with a large (by American car standards) chrome side view mirror neatly attached to the leading edge of the front door.

And that door is tidy in stature, with a modest amount of tumblehome. The W123 was certainly meant to be a utilitarian luxury car, not a personal luxury car with glass so bendy it’ll smack your face when you enter/exit the cabin.

The B-pillar looks conventional from afar, but the details show an era of craftsmanship with multiple types of rubber seals around the windows, 45-degree meeting points, and significant panel gaps.

The iconic Mercedes-Benz door pulls have a significant heft in your hand that’s only matched by the satisfying sound it makes when you pull on it. For readers who don’t know this era in Mercedes design, seek this handle at a car show and ask for a taste of that pull … because it’s worth the effort (so to speak).

The rear door has enough length to signify a luxury sedan, if not a full-length limousine. (Mercedes offered the W116 SEL for that need.) The ratio of glass to metal is closer to 50/50 than you are likely to see on the road from another vehicle today, and that alludes to a tragic state of affairs in the current era’s haplessly anti-ergonomic designs that are truly unsafe for others.

This greenhouse’s combination of chrome, glass, and upright lines, paired with the door’s smart curve around the wheel arch, was already a prestigious look in the 1970s. But it became something of a universal object of lust once Bruno Sacco translated it upon the flagship W126 for the go-go 1980s.

The strong horizontal chrome/rubber strips in the middle/bottom of the W123 body are a precursor to Mr. Sacco’s famous planks and their intent for horizontal homogeneity.

Mercedes-Benz implemented chrome and rubber in a streamliner fashion for the rain gutter, and in a smash burger kind of way for the quarter window seals.

Summers are too hot for glass roofs these days, so a metal sunroof (instead of the glass moonroof) is one throwback I’d sincerely appreciate. The aggressive rain gutter makes sense when you look at the curvature of the roof as it blends into the C-pillar—this style befits a pre-war sedan. But the curve does a great job softening the aforementioned long, assertive horizontal lines seen elsewhere in the greenhouse.

The ratio of metal C-pillar to glass is whimsical and light, but crash-test video shows the W123 was pretty strong when dropped on its head. (Not by modern standards, of course.) But the strong horizontal lines in the moldings, tail lights, bumper, and greenhouse do a fantastic job accentuating the W123’s prodigious trunk space.

While the Euro-spec W123 we are sampling is also a top-drawer 280E with chrome bumper corners, it is obvious that the U.S.-spec, rubber-infused bumpers visually (and literally) weigh down the design. While both are bumper shelves, only the one in the U.S. is rated to hold value-sized groceries from the likes of Costco and Sam’s Club.

Even worse, the extra load bearing at each end takes your eyes away from the strong horizontal lines that extend from front to back. That is seen in the protective molding and the subtle creases below and above it.

Maybe it’s because I stare at the horizon too much, but horizontal lines generally smash through other visual elements, reducing them to less important features in a design. The W123’s fuel door is one such example, as it looks huge on this small body but is harder to concentrate on when natural light accentuates the horizontal.

Note the hint of whimsy in the base of the C-pillar, thanks to a chrome-infused trim cover above the seam where the roof meets the body. This trim part was implemented in a harsher, more brutalist fashion for the Mercedes-Benz 190E (W201).

The C-pillar whimsy was likely needed to justify the “pulled back” demeanor of the rear wheel arch, as it forces more negative area into the quarter panel. The arch helps balance the curves found in the glass above and keeps the W123 from being a boring slab of horizontal lines.

The curve not only pulls back, but it pulls in: giving nice views of those stunning Pirelli reproduction tires!

Much like the curves and tapers found in the rear wheel arch, the W123s strong horizontal lines are actually gentle curves: sheetmetal creases eventually thin to a point, while the molding bends to conform to the quarter panel’s curvature.

Deck lid delights of the horizontal variety abound, showing that Germany also transitioned from tail fins (with the W110 fintail) to slab sides and blade fenders like their Detroit counterparts. But it’s a shame the deck lid’s cut line cannot share the same space as the contour of that fender blade.

Perhaps the fender blade fights with the significant cut line for the trunk, to the point that it’s too subtle to even need to exist?

The aforementioned contouring in the heavily horizontal molding also does a fantastic job integrating and luxurifying (a technical term) the W123’s deeply ribbed tail light assemblies.

But first, a view of the period-appropriate flat roof, and the surprising number of deeply-contoured chrome fittings implemented to fasten the rear window to the W123’s body.

Predominantly flat surfaces with a singular contour at one end have a fantastic amount of surface tension. And there’s nothing like a ray of sunlight to highlight that tension.

And that contour is a graceful one, continuing all the way to the end of the deck lid. But it is always the details that delight, and the dotted surfaces (exposed by buffing the paintwork) in the background of Mercedes-Benz emblems of the era is another tradition I wish we could bring back to production.

Lighting texture was mentioned at the front end, but the W123’s tail lights highlight the common-sense engineering Mercedes-Benz was known for back then. Dirt flick-up is a real problem on cars moving at just about any speed, and these deep channels were wind tunnel tested to eliminate the risk of a tail light getting fully covered by dirt.

Certainly a noble task, but the execution is what truly delights: each color elegantly joins the next. Reverse engineering would likely show a lego-like attachment method from the backside, but it’s better to just admire the seamless transition from yellow to red to white. Knowing how they did it would spoil the magic trick!

And just in case all that ribbed lighting made you forget, the rubber and chrome moldings frame the top and bottom of the light, curving from corner to corner. This also makes a delightful bottom frame for the deck lid.

The rubber end caps for the chrome molding are pretty slick, while the joinery for the chrome center bumper and the 280E’s chrome corners look a bit downmarket compared to American Personal Luxury machinery of the era.

But this was a multi-purpose vehicle, and those bumpers were easier to repair when put into livery service. The functionality and purposeful luxury of Mercedes-Benz vehicles of this era point to a vehicle designed for tight urban spaces, winding open roads, and high-speed comfort. I reckon that very few luxury vehicles made after the W123 can make this claim.

Again, the Euro-spec bumpers truly shine. Their modest size lets the curvaceous, one-piece, lower fascia truly shine in reflected sunlight. Chrome-tipped exhaust pipes never hurt, either.

There’s no doubt the W123 is the whole package, personified in long horizontal lines. It was a prestigious luxury car in America, a taxi in Europe, and remains a workhorse in lesser-developed countries in modern times. The design accommodated all, satisfying diverse needs in a prestigious package. It played with Cadillacs and got down and dirty doing battle with the likes of the Opel Rekord and Ford Granada.

While the W123 was whatever kind of luxury car it needed to be, the future of Mercedes-Benz was fully on display with the Auto 2000 concept from 1981. The SL-style grille and blocky sheetmetal look out of place on the W126 that donated its body to this concept, but it rightly showed our future. The Auto 2000 was both a precursor to the minimalist/generic Mercedes products of recent history, and its hatchback design warned us of our love for the Crossover Utility Vehicle (CUV).

Old and new, distilled in one photo. The times were changing, but perhaps not everything in Mercedes-Benz’s DNA died an unceremonious death.

Not all has been lost, as what is arguably Mercedes-Benz’s most prestigious and desirable vehicle proves the point. The 2025 G-class SUV may not have the W123’s passenger car grille (SUVs probably should gravitate to the sporty SL-style grille, anyway) but the emphasis on the horizontal is clear to see.

Rubber-infused lines are prominently installed along the body, and the strong horizontal implement bisecting the door handles embraces the aesthetic that made the W123 so beloved around the world. So perhaps not all is lost, and that’s a good thing to see.

Thank you all for reading, I hope you have a lovely day.