breakermart

iv just joined this forum purely to ask this one question here, iv got a w210 e300 turbodiesel wich has been a great car appart from one thing..... the bloody key!!!! the car was bought with one key, its only done 130,000 miles and i only paid £700 for the car, the key was playing up for a long time and because i was too busy to sort it, it one day just packed up completely, absolutely notthing happens when inserted into the ignition nor anything when i press the buttons.
i understand this is a grey area what im asking here.. but!

can the car be hot wired/ started without the key?

this will decide wether il keep the car or wether i just scrap it as i refuse to pay whatever few hundred for a new key as like i sad i only paid £700 for the car. if it can be done but people are reluctant to tell me how then i will prove however i can that i have a genuine problem here. i dont want to scrap the car but i will if i cant get it started. please help me out here sombody, save the life of a mercedes lol wether it matters or not, im from leicester.

raymond g-

you know the 210 uses different keys, yes? so it would be helpful to know which
key you're having problems with. which year. which country (guessing UK).
saying that the key was "playing up" doesn't help folks understand what the
symptoms are so it would be great to have the symptoms described as factually
as possible rather than figuratively or emotionally so. what buttons are you
pushing?

so take a deep breath and try to be more descriptive, including voltage check
results, sounds, any patterns or anomalies you see. otherwise, left with your
cryptic post, it's just a wild guessing game with no real starting point.

breakermart

hi there, im not looking to diagnose the fault, the fault is there (key has lost its ability to comunicate with car) once its lost that ability it cannot be read to duplicate the key, only other way is to go into a MB dealer and order a brand new key for silly money, but what i am asking, is can the car be started without the key, ie hotwire it. if its a plain simple no then il just scrap it and move on lol. just seems a shame not to try and get it working.
i can understand if people are reluctant to show some newby how to potentialy steal a car but as i mentioned before, i can provide whatever evidence to show you that my car is how i say it is. it is a uk car and its a 1997 reg. it has the key thats in this picture.

raymond g-

okay, so you have a Smartkey (electronic). absent any other information, the only suggestion
I have would be to check the car battery and be sure it is putting out 12+vdc under load