anonymousmoose

Visited Araluen Botanic Park yesterday [http://www.araluenbotanicpark.com.au/]. Such a good opportunity to take a few photos I though.

Can you tell I actually washed the car this time? Also scrubbed the rims

It was a nice drive to the hills too. Nice curvy roads to have some fun in this 4 cylinder. The AMG sports suspension holds it own IMO.

ncmudbug

She's looking really good!

Tri-Star

Glossy! I need to get myself an ///AMG kit.

Glyn M Ruck

Great pics. Man the W203 is aging well.

anonymousmoose

It's still only 1 model/shape old . When the next Benz comes out, I might upgrade to a w204 face-lift. Hopefully that will be in another 2 years time. BUT if my wife gets her licence and cashflow is good, who knows, my wife is liking the SLK's. If we did get an SLK, I might keep the w203 and drive the newer SLK. See what happens... for now, the W203 is bringing me a whole heap of joy and I like it better than the pre-facelift W204's by a lot.

And driving it on the hill cornering roads on the weekend was a heck of a lot fun. Maybe its the sports factory sports suspension upgrades, but it felt really good.

Pakeboy

Looks great...good job on the picture taking...

LILBENZ230

It may be true that the W203 is only one model back in time.. however, the basic design from the car is from the 1990s. It's been out of production for 5 years. It's not a spring chicken and yes it is aging very well.

C230 Sport Coup

I still think the 203 is better looking than the 204.
Nothing else ever really looked like the 203.
The other car companies all went the way of BMW with their straight line
Bertone-ish styling cues, derived from BMW's Mr. Bangle.

With the 204, it seems all the car companies now make cars that look amaziingly similar and even Hyundai is in the game with it's Sonata which mimics the Mercedes with irritating accuracy. You can't tell a German car from a Japanese or Korean one anymore.

BTW- Interesting to see a 2006 with a Kompressor motor.
We didn't have that in the states, they went to the 2.5L 6.
Hopefully they got the head design issue sorted out by then,
but probably you'll want to change the timing chain as a maint. item.

We also didn't have parktronic as an option, and I love the way the dimpled
bumper strips look.

anonymousmoose

Thanks; mine was sold in 06 but is an MY05 design. I was fortunate that the previous owner pretty much fully optioned it with AMG sports kit and the upgraded climate control system. Around $75,000 she would have cost him. He traded it in 2011 for a Range Rover and I bought it from a prestige car-yard with a fantastic reputation. The only thing missing is memory seats with full electrics. But she does has partial electric seat upgrades too. I think it took me literally about 5 minutes into the test drive to make up my mind in buying it.

I must confess I do like the W204 design. But I only really like the w204 facelift interior. When I bought my w203, I had the option to buy a w204 classic 2007 model. But I liked the w203 interior a lot better. It might have been different if the w204 was the avantgarde but I still prefer the w203 interior to the 07-10 w204s.

I'm a self confessed car mechanical greenhorn, but I do think the sports suspension mine came with makes a difference. She goes very well around corners. I drove a BMW 3 series E90 which is said to have the best balance in handling. My w203 is very close. I can take orders very well and the car will go where I want it to.

Drive belt was recently replaced and the car has full Mercedes maintenance. The timing chain will be replaced when its due. I plan to follow the Mercedes recommended maintenance and plan and will consider any advise given to me from the forum. Should I ask them to look at the timing chain?