Interesting, no I have not driven one but I subscribe to Deboss Garage on YouTube, he swapped a 4bt into a 2000s Suburban and after a while it wasn't all that worth it. He said it was noisy and vibrated quite a bit and you could definitely hear it clearly in his in-car videos. This coming from a guy who is currently swapping a Caterpillar engine out of a dump truck into an OBS Ford. Said it got up to 28 mpg though...
Like I said I'll gladly swap a 12v 6bt into my D200 at some point but for a C-cruiser I'd much prefer something quiet with at least 6 cylinders in the 3.0-4.0L range. We do own a 2005 VW Passat with the 2.0L TDI 4-banger and that thing is as loud and shaky as I will tolerate in a passenger car. That particular engine is a tad small to push around a C-body though our Passat weighs about the same as a 4-door A-body.
The early mechanical Mercedes diesels are super easy to swap but don't have much power and can't handle a lot more boost and fuel like bigger truck diesels. It's also really hard to find those in the U.S. in 6-cylinder form, they were almost all 5-cylinders. A friend of mine just got a 1982 Mercedes turbodiesel and even in perfect tune it takes 18+ seconds just to get to 60 mph. And I don't think that car even weighs 2 tons it's the mid-size model (forget the name).
