Be Excellent To Each Other

I've never known it not to be, and I'm fairly bad with fiddly things like that.

That's got 114K on it, it's a year older, and let's not even get started on fuel and tax (insurance will most likely be OK as I'm an old fucker with an impeccable record and no claims).

Don't get me wrong it's an awesome car, but I'm desperately trying to convince myself that the one I'm looking at just about falls into the outside edge of the bounds of 'reasonable'.

I wish I didn't love cars so much, I'd have saved a ridiculous amount of money over the years. Some people just see them as entirely utilitarian items that need to do nothing beyond 'move people and stuff around', in the same way you just want a kettle to boil water, they don't care what it looks like, or performs like, or anything else.

I blame VW's advertising when I was a child, or something. I certainly don't get it off my parents, as neither of them give a flying fuck what they drive as long as it goes from A to B and costs as little as possible in the process.

Dead easy. The lad from Halfords does it.

Noooo! They just click in and out! I can see again now.

Joans had me convinced otherwise until I decided to give it a go. It took mere seconds.

Merc interiors are fucking horrible.

Going to pick up a Skoda tomorrow.

Is this to replace the Jazz?

It's what all the cool kids drive.

Nothing can replace the Jazz

Page 666, yo

It can depend. Replacing the blades on the A3 was a pain in the arse, although how much of that was crap design of mechanism, and how much of that was infrequently used mechanism gumming up, I couldn't say. I think anything vaguely recent should be ok though.

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADADADADADA pa-tish BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM pe-tish BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

Pe-tish is the greatest turbo lag noise ever.

It's a dump valve noise, fewl.

Page 666!

That's what I said. CAR

I used to love that noise on my Scooby, to the extent that I'd often boot it a bit, and change gears, for no reason other than to hear that noise.

Great for fuel consumption, of course.

The greatest would in fact be Tsuutsutsutsu. Turbostall beats dump valve every time.

I dunno, I think antilag sounds the best. It's like a war going on in your exhaust pipe.

Heater control board blown. £900 from subaru. Might look on ebay

Youch.

Have at you sir.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4pLXj6VfwNo

Gotta be honest here Choppers, not my cup of tea, do you really need something of such whale like proportions? Plus, big 10 year old diesel + pootling around doing 2k miles per annum doesn't sound too clever IMO.

Don't get me wrong it's a nice motor if you like that kind of thing, but if you like driving get a drivers car, not some ageing barge waft mobile that was designed to look good on an executive car park a decade ago.

Oh for fuck's sake I've only gone and bought it

It really does look like a new car both inside and out, took it out for a decent test drive and was very impressed, in a straight line it's got a reasonable turn of speed too. (Not sure what it'll be like through corners though, but I think we can guess.....)

It's got four brand new tyres on it (they're visibly brand new) and has just been fully serviced, apparently it tells you when it needs a service and the interval is usually around 18 months, he'll also put a six month warranty on it. (My Type-R needs four new tyres and the rear brakes doing, which is around £700 worth of work, but he's giving me full trade-in value regardless.)

He did concede it'd been sat around too long and needed using, to the extent that the tyres that were on it had started to crack a little bit, hence four new Continentals on there. He did however assure me that they'd done everything that needed to be done with a car that'd seen little use, and that he'd fully expect it to go 18 months now before the service light comes on.

Only slight downer is it hasn't got built-in USB or iPod connectors, although the head unit does play MP3 CDs. However, the guy has sorted out a box of tricks and cabling that he'll fit to integrate iPod, USB and Bluetooth and will be controllable from the head unit.

Totally ridiculous car of course, probably one of my stupidest yet. There's a button you can press which drops the rear passenger headrests down to make reversing easier, because I've always felt that my previous cars have been missing that.

I take your comments on board Cavey, but I did rather like it, it reminded me somewhat of the C6, but built by Germans instead of the French, which has to be a good thing.

Should be ready to collect middle of next week, and then take it back in to get the extra box of tricks fitted once it arrives from the UK.

£5500 trade-in for my Type-R, so £4950 to pay.

Nothing can go wrong with any of this, I'm sure.

I dream of a bigger car like that. Mrs JC has a Mini One and it's all perfectly well and good until she goes around corners the way she does. Then it all becomes a bit pukey lol.



You bought it on page 666 lol.

Yes. Seems there are bits on ebay and the garage says if I get one they will fit it OR I should get an electrician to wire in a switch to bypass the control board.

As I said, nothing can go wrong.

This is really fucking stupid, even by my standards.

Hey fair play mate it's a nice car and I'm sure you'll enjoy it, it's been nicely looked after and it'll be lovely and comfy, as well as brisk to boot.

I've been working out how much that Merc cost when it was new, and with the options it has (which are fairly extensive) its list price would have been just shy of £50K.

There's another CLS 320 on a forecourt in Ramsey but it seems to be a much lower spec, it doesn't even have the parking sensors front or rear. How could Mercedes sell a £43K car (which is what the base spec cost) and not even put parking sensors on it? I had a look inside and this other CLS is missing sat nav too, Mercedes sure are stingy with the extras.

The other CLS looks crappy as well, with little dents and scuffs and all that stuff that you'd associate with a car of its age, if the one I'm getting looked anything like this other one I wouldn't have given it a second look.

Insurance on the Merc seems to be very reasonable, I'll get in touch with Privilege (my current insurer) on Monday, but confused.com came back with a best quote on the Merc of £253, so it doesn't look like it'll cost me any more to insure than the Type-R, maybe even a bit less.

I'm also hoping to get north of 35mpg, maybe even towards 40mpg, but time will tell on that one.

The main thing is that nothing catastrophically expensive goes wrong with it, mine doesn't have the air suspension which is good, as that's the one thing that always seems to bring in the big bills sooner or later on this generation of CLS, beyond that they appear to be (he said, with a hint of prayer), well built and reliable.

Mercs are generally bombproof. The only thing with yours might be that because the mileage is so low they might not have discovered all the niggling faults it has yet.

Does it come with any form of warranty?

Yeah whilst I was chatting to the guy on the test drive I said I'd need a reasonable warranty even though the car is nearly ten years old, and he said he'd put six months warranty on it. As I do 800-1000 miles per month that should be enough for any niggles to fall out of the woodwork and get remedied under warranty.

He seemed super-confident though that it shouldn't need anything at all doing on it until the service light comes on, which given my driving pattern (a decent stretch over the mountain and back every day) he estimated at 18 months.

I read shitloads of owner reviews at the main motoring sites before deciding on the car, and they're almost universally positive, especially on reliability.

Most of the problems with cars these days are just sensors. In all the time I've been with Mrs JC the only thing other than the norm (like bushes and tyres and stuff) that our Mini has ever needed were two oxygen sensors (one on the manifold one further back) and I did those myself. They weren't cheap mind, nearly £200 each but yeah, it's always sensors. The only sensor that went that I wasn't able to replace was the steering lock sensor. The messed up part was that it was still working perfectly (you could hear it engaging and disengaging) but you can't buy them so BMW charged us over £500 for the privilege.

But engines and what not generally tend to be pretty bulletproof now. In all the years of owning my Tiburon the only one thing to fail was the MAF, and I picked up one from a breakers for $15 (just took it off and he didn't know what it was so he said $15).

Only problem that the my family have had in more Mercedes than I can reliably count is the most recent one with the CVT gearbox. Which had the potential to be quite expensive.

Moral of the story: If you get a CVT box, make sure you get a long mileage warranty on it. Or just don't get one.

Ebay. £25.

Nice, hope it works

Paperwork all signed, change of ownership in progress (the dealer is doing all that for me), insurance switching over tomorrow, collecting the Merc at lunch.

I am now officially past the point of no return and in 24 hours will be the 'proud' owner of a nonsensical ten year old barge.

Everyone at work pissed their pants when I showed them the picture of it and one of the admin ladies said the only way she could picture me in the car is with a peaked cap on, chauffeuring someone else around....

Apparently the car looks like a banana.

Your excitement is infectious.

You tell them to wait and see what they think when you peal out of your work's car park with smoke pouring off the rear tyres and the V12 bouncing off the rev limiter.

OH WAIT AMG

Seriously though, I think it's lovely. Fuck those dudes.

How much would that have cost new?

Scroll to the top of the page

As Grim... said, fuck em. I think it's gorgeous. And remember dude, pics or it didn't happen !

haha yeah don't forget the hat

Oh aye, yeah I would have guessed about that much. I think it's nice, not what I'd choose but I bet it's lush inside.

Thanks for the comments chaps I will indeed grab a few pics and I may do a video review at some point as my career as an internationally famous YouTube online slots player celebrity is long finished and yet still I hunger to CREATE ART.

I was looking at some stats on the car earlier today, it has an 80L fuel tank and weighs nearly two tonnes.

My car feels like new!

Oh and congrats on the Merc, mental car for the price.