What Car Should a Gheorghie Drive -- Marls Edition

I made a lot of decisions in college, the vast majority of which were bad. A handful were good, including my steadfast determination to rush Marls. Even back then he wasn't much to look at, he was generically northern and physically blocky. He didn't jump out at you like some other rushees did, but that was fine with me. I was always concerned with what was going on under the surface.

Parenthetically, I remember a discussion early on in my sophomore year where a rush candidate's name came up and one of his strongest attributes raised by his sponsor was "He's the fastest guy on the rugby team." This, of course, enraged one of our brothers who proclaimed "I'm the fasted guy on the rugby team!!" To which I thought to myself, "Is this really how the sausage is made here, at the tightest brotherhood on campus?" I was much more concerned with people's character, whether I wanted to drink a beer with them, whether I could rely on them, rather than their footspeed. Luckily, Pi Lam sausage contains multitudes--our sausages are yoodge.

Looking past Marls' staid appearance and bad hygiene, I saw that he had a ton of heart, a motor that wouldn't quit, and a snarky Yankee attitude. He was clearly the type of guy who you could rely on when you needed help. He comes up big, some might say bigly, and unexpectedly so. He outkicks his coverage. Nowadays he showers regularly and wears (relatively) clean clothes. His "set the clippers on one" haircut and lawyerly attire present a no-nonsense mien, but he's still the same fratty powerhouse underneath that unremarkable shell. Despite his Teutonic heritage he is, in a word, a mensch.

Marls should drive a 1993 Mercedes 500E, black with black leather, and with the windows tinted as much as the Virginia DMV will allow.

W-124 is the internal code name Mercedes-Benz used for their E-class cars produced between 1985 and 1996. These are considered to be some of the best-made cars of all time. They routinely last for 300,000 miles. They are preposterously reliable. They have a cult following not unlike our President*. In fact, I work with a guy who has at least four W-124s: a 300TE wagon (in this insane non-metallic pistachio green that makes me lose all decorum every time I see it in the garage), a 300CE cabriolet (also non-metallic green, but deeper, a coniferous color), a 300E sedan (non-metallic maroon) and a black over black 500E with tinted windows. They are all fucking glorious.

If you don't care about cars, the 500E doesn't look like much, just another old Benz. Turns out that the 500E is the result of an unholy alliance between MB and Porsche. For reasons I don't completely understand, Mercedes turned to the boys from Zuffenhausen to help them turn the W-124 platform into a hotrod. Mercedes wanted to put their 322 hp 5.0L V8 from their SL roadster into an E class, and Porsche had to modify the body and undercarriage so much that the car was too wide to be manufactured in MB's facility, so Porsche had to build it in their plant.



Porsche didn't fuck with robots back then, so they built the 500E by hand. So that boring old Benz you see on this page? That's the first Porsche four-door sedan, engineered and bolted together manually, one screw at a time by Porsche engineers. Can't say that about the Panamera. They didn't make a lot of these, about ten thousand, and most people don't even appreciate them when they see them in the flesh. But if you take the time to look under the hood of a 500E, you'll realize it's something special.

Make no mistake, the 500E will eat a Boxster's lunch in a straight line and in the twisties, and it's comfortable as hell so you can take your clients to dinner. It is in all likelihood the best all-around car from the analog age, and the cops won't hate on you for driving it. We probably won't see anything like it ever again--a family sedan from one of the premiere mass-market luxury manufacturers of all time, engineered and assembled by hand by the best German sports car firm ever. And it's a goddamn Benz made back when Benz really cared about being Benz, which means it's more solid than a bank vault and you know your kid will be safe in the back seat no matter what.

The 500E will take care of you and yours, and kick everyone else's ass if it has to. That's what Marls should drive.