My love and my life, my Mars Red 2006 C55 w/custom navi/stereo

 

Since I bought mine a year ago I've only seen two others for sale in the U.S.

They only made 451 in 06, most are black or silver. A red 06 is hard to find.

 

 

Hey, car looks great! I've had my 05 mars red for a couple of years now, and still look forward to getting behind the wheel as much as possible-especially on the track. You mention custom navi/stereo...could you elaborate a bit on that? I'm interested in changing my system out as well. Thanks!

 

Good luck with your system. My brother has been installing professionally for the last 12 years in Columbus and he tore everything apart for me and helped me get the wires run and the radio installed. No one else would touch it. I replaced the factory speakers. The HK system is a 2 ohm I think and aftermarket radios are meant to work with 4 ohm (or the other way around I forget now). I called everyone I could to try to identify where the "can" wire was to hook up steering wheel controls without any success. We only used about three wires out of the harness I bought online (I would have to ask my brother again why we did that). The dash kit I found online worked perfectly.

If I remember right, we started by taking the air vents out above the factory nav, everything else came out easily after that. I believe I saw a post somewhere where someone made instructions with pictures for changing the radio.

I custom built the box and angled the amps off of it, then made flush plates for around the sub and amps and carpeted them. I had to make a new bottom piece (what covers the spare) so I could still get my spare out in an emergency (although I really don't want to try).

It's a Kenwood DNX-9960 nav unit. I had to install an antenna that looks like the little sirius radio antennas on my dash which I wasn't crazy about, and a small speaker up by my mirror for the bluetooth. I also bought the nice kenwood backup cam with all the different modes/views.

I have pictures of my car when it was in pieces too. It makes me cringe looking at them. The only thing worse was all the loud popping and cracking sounds my clips made as my brother pulled apart my dash. All in all I couldn't be happier with the install. I leaned on a piece of plastic and put a tiny 1/4" wide gash in my leather to the right of my shift knob, but everything else was smooth as silk.

The guy at the dealership said it was the nicest looking install he had ever seen on a Benz. Seemed easy enough to me, but it took me a year to finish my flush plates.

We powered the amps from the fuse box in the trunk. Much easier that way. If you get stuck pm me and I'll try to help! Let me know how it goes, I'll take a pic of my dash tomorrow so you can see how it looks.

 

Beautiful car. I have the Mars Red C32 myself, and absolutely love the color.
Reminds me of Ferrari Red

 

I love red AMG's. Everyone should post their red AMG pics somewhere! Sweet C32 BTW.

 

There's one up for sale in eBay right now:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Merce...item19d0802164

 

I spent 2 years searching for my car. I looked at 7 different red ones but all were missing something. I had to have all the options I wanted. I ended up flying to Texas for it and driving the 2100 miles home.

 

I flew to Atlanta from Columbus and drove mine back! well worth the trip! pain to get registered in ohio with a georgia sales reciept.

 

wow, don't see many 2006 red C55's for sale. that same one is listed on autotrader.com along with another 06! I've never seen two at once on autotrader. Must be the season.

 

Kenwood DNX-9960

 

The Mars Red is a great color on the W203. I would have been happy with one as well. There's also a 2006 for sale on eBay in Pewter Metallic (which is my favorite color). So many rare colors for sale lately. When I was looking 2 years ago, they were ALL black and silver (and I will not own a silver car).

 

This makes me want to paint my car mars red.... . Mars red looks great! Young blondie has one here locally. License plate is WILDKATZ...

 

Mars red is hot, but so is Le Mans Blue!!!

 

Got mine from AZ shipped to CT