If you were an executive in the late Sixties and early Seventies, there was only two choices of car – the spartan Mercedes-Benz W114 or the prestigious Jaguar XJ6. With both cars worth similar values today, how do the 2.8-litre versions of both compare now?
WHETHER WE want to admit it or not, a lot of us buy our cars based upon the image they project. We want to be seen as special, separate, exclusive – and this is why sales of the BMW 3-Series began to routinely outstrip those of the Ford Mondeo around the turn of the millennium.
Jaguar drivers aren’t immune either – we might admire the engineering of our chosen cars, but at least some of the decision – whether now or with their first Jaguars – will have been based upon what the car says about its driver.
And Jaguar’s image in the early Seventies was stronger than it had been in a decade. The associations with London criminal types had been shaken off, the range was nearly new in its entirety, and there was an air of quiet respectability to an XJ6 that was lacking in the older Mk 2-based models, and in the giant 420G. Few marques could touch Jaguar in terms of what they said about you. For the £2,617 that an XJ6 2.8 automatic cost in 1971, a Citroen DS23 Pallas would have marked you as eccentric, a Volvo 164 would have marked you as dull, and a Rover P5B would have marked you as old-fashioned. If you wanted to tell the world you had really made it, the Mercedes-Benz 250 offered a similar-sized engine and car to the Jaguar – but cost almost 20 percent more. That put the Mercedes firmly in the ‘company director’ salary bracket – but was it really a better car than the Jaguar? And moreover, could it justify the hefty increase in price?
Mercedes-Benz launched its W114/W115 series in 1968 – mid-sized saloon cars in what we would now consider to be the E-Class family. Styled by French car designer, Paul Bracq, they pioneered a new suspension system for the company utilising semi-trailing rear arms and a ball-joint front end, which would see service under the next-generation S-Class and under the SL which would remain in production until the end of the Eighties.
The W115 was the economy model; typically four-cylinder and less well equipped, while the W114 was the prestigious six-cylinder model. Known when new as the ‘/8’ models – derived from a similar marking on their chassis plates denoting their 1968 introduction – the ‘Stroke 8’ saloons earned a reputation for solidity, reliability and good engineering. The W114 models ranged from the 230.6 (to differentiate from the four-cylinder 230.4) through to the fuel-injected 280E. Mercedes offered a saloon, while there were pillarless coupe variants known as the 250C/CE and 280C/CE.
Mercedes facelifted the W114 for 1973, with a lower bonnet, wider grille, revised bumpers, and removal of the
