Today is the start of a new chapter in my vehicle ownership - a raffle Win Mercedes. I won this fully working vehicle in a raffle on a car forum, the back story is the previous owner bought it on ebay for £500 to drive to his 2nd home in the sount of France, however it soon became apparent that the AC very much DID NOT WORK and never would work again without major wallet surgery. He initially tried to sell it, then decided to raffle it off and I won, having spent just £19 (nineteen pounds) on three tickets.
This was brought down to the headquarters of the Lawnmower Consortium by the East Anglia Syndicate motor pool boss, aka my brother, who helpfully lives 10 minutes walk from the guy selling it. As the seller was a top bloke, it had 3/4 of a tank of unleaded in so all we needed to do was sort insurance - helpfully I'd not got around to cancelling the Saab policy yet so that was switched over - and then sort out the change of owner and tax when it arrived. It came down last night, and behaved itself impeccably on the way down - 170 miles.
Today I got a chance to take it out for a drive and am very impressed with it. Its comfortable, adequately fast, quiet and capacious. Here it is basking in the year-round* sunshine we get here on the south coast
As you can see, from 10' its a cracker, getting up a bit closer and there are a few cosmetic issues that I knew about. The drivers door is a bit crispy at the bottom rear corner
But this patch is smaller than I expected - probably about 4" square? I'll have a look at this in due course - I'm slightly concerned attacking it with a wire wheel in the angry grinder may cause it to fall off entirely so I may have to have a bit of a think before using the heavy weaponry on it. The arches are a bit bubbly but not broken through the paint yet. I may see about giving these a seeing to with the grinder, Vactan, primer, topcoat and lacquer method that I've used before on the Daewoo to moderately good effect.
The tyres are a who's-who of quality chinese brands. 2 Jinyus, a Rapid and a Westlake. To be fair all have decent tread left on them but we'll have to see how it copes with a wet roundabout in due course. Its been a long while since I last drive a RWD car! I might have to see about some new boots but we'll see.
The glovebox revealed a 5cd autochanger and a paperback HBOL
And a fully stamped service history
I was slightly perpexed that the reg in the front of the service book is different to whats on the car, but it turned out the last-but-one owner bought the car for its reg plate, took that off and sold it on virtually immediately with the new one the DVLA assigned it. Anyway, the coolant and oil are up to the correct levels, the oil is a bit black but not tarry so I'll probably give it a change of oil and oil filter shortly for good measure.
The inside is luxuriously appointed in MB Tex (I don't think its real leather), lovely and clean with some impressively realistic faux wood in the centre console. The gearshift is very good - I'd heard that MB manual boxes weren't much cop, but this is lovely and slick. It took me a whole to work out that to get reverse you needed to lift the gearstick and move to far left and down but we got there in the end. The rear has good space and cup holders - vital for children on long journeys
The boot is massive, it hadn't got a luggage cover and the little net things are broken on both sides but its not a problem, a replacement cover from a breaker is on order. Investigation of the wheel well uncovered a decent original full size steel spare, a set of regular wheelnuts and the locking wheelnut key - the locking ones will be getting taken off toute suite - and a barely used towbar
RESULT! I checked and all the mounting gubbinz is under the rear bumper so thats a billy bonus. I don't actually have a trailer, but thats not the point.
The run down has given it a good workout, the trip computer reckoned on an average of 40 to the gallon at motorway speeds in 6th and there is still 1/3rd of a tank of pez left in it.
The 'hand' brake setup is a new one on me. The brake is applied with a 4th pedal to the left of the clutch, and released with a hand pull to the right of my right knee. on the flat this is fine, but I may have some fun* doing a hill start the first few times! Clutch is good, decent bite and about mid-way up the pedal travel so no concerns with that. The only other thing that will want a look I suspect is drop links. The suspension is very clonky down my road, which is a shambles of a patchwork of poor quality repairs over original 1960s surfacing. It is bad in every car I've driven down it, but the merc is quite bangy so might want to budget for some droplinks or bushes or something come MOT time in February.
I'm taking it on the motorway tomorrow to go up to a local country park with my eldest so we'll see how we get on. I'll give it an oil change to begin with then see where we go.
Overall an excellent car, astonishing considering it cost me the princely sum of £19 and 190 miles into ownership there is STILL 1/3rd of a tank in it.
Oh, and I got my tax refund through for the Saab earlier today too so thats a nice rebate as well, so that can go towards some service bits on the Mercedes. Watch this space for more updates
