Reinstalling a Becker Mexico cassette in a 1979 450SE

One of my friends in the Mercedes Club recently bought a nice original Mercedes-Benz 450SE. Is a 1979 model in Silver-Green metallic with date leather. It is equipped with a sunroof, which is surprisingly rare on an Australian delivered 450SE. The cars came well equipped with standard leather seats, self-leveling rear suspension, AC, power windows etc. The two features that they surprisingly didn’t have for such an expensive car is the sunroof and rear headrests. Both could be optioned. This car has the colour matched hubcaps that I prefer to the wheels. I was able to drive this car at […]

Becker 374 Operation Instructions

The Becker 374 Mexico Cassette Vollstereo Reverse was the standard radio installed in the S-Class from 1979-1981 models in Australia. It was seen on the last of the W116s and I believe the early W126 too. This radio replaced the 485, the last of the pinstripe models in the W116s. It was the last of the older style radios with knobs to be found on the S-Class before the digital display radios were introduced.

The most significant difference between the Becker 374 and the similar looking Europa was the auto reverse function. The Europa was found in W123 models of […]

Becker 868 Operation Instructions

In Australia, the 560 models were standard with a Becker 868 Mexico CD Player. This doesn’t sound like much of a deal in 2022, but back in the mid 80s this was a huge deal. Should you have wanted to upgrade your 300SE or 420SEL from the standard Becker Cassette player to the CD, you would have paid more than $2,000 extra in 1990. This is almost $4,500 in todays money.

In most countries, the CD Player was an optional extra even on the 560 models, but Mercedes-Benz Australia priced them so high they needed justification for the difference between […]

Planning Becker radio installs

In the two years of owning my 560SEL, one of the things I have appreciated is the original Becker CD player. I’ve owned many classic Mercedes-Benz models over the years, but until the 560SEL none of them had their original Becker intact. The Becker radios just look and feel right in the dash of the car. I had never really understood that before. That got me thinking about putting some of my other cars back to stock.

The first car in line is my 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450SLC. When I purchased the car in 2003, it had a 90’s era cassette […]