Buying a A168 or A169 Help please
 

Good day all,

Im from South Africa and would like to get some advice on the following models.

The W168 is by now seen as a very old car but still see so much of them on the road (specially the face lift models) but i hate that look of the car and love (or accept) the look of the W169.

I'm looking at the automatic versions for the wife as she had a bad knee injury and struggle with a manual in traffic driving. The W168 face lift A160 auto are extremely well priced secondhand. My question on this model is how reliable is it and also what are there common flaws? I have heard by one or two dealers there auto boxes seems to give in by now as they are old. There mileage second hand is anything between 80 000 and 170 000km and believe it or not they going for roughly the same price high and low mileage cars.

Getting to the W169, we test drove a A180 CDI auto the other day and wow, what a smooth ride. The car is at this moment well priced private sale of R50 000. The car is service at the agents and is well kept. The only known issue is the front brakes needs replacing according to the car. The mileage is a little on the higher side for the year car (2006) sitting at 190 000km. What are the flaws on these models (diesel and petrol auto models) and what do i need to look out for? I tend to lean more towards the W169 as i like the shape and i might drive the car on the odd occasion myself and it feels less girly:zoom:

Thanks in advance.

Any one?

Hi, i have the automatic W169 A180 and it's a really good car but it's expensive to maintain.
I've also had the chance to drive a W168 A170 in the past, and it was a real pleasure to drive.

I've bought my w169 for 5k€ in France last year it had 97k km.

One really important thing you should keep in mind, is that the front of the car is really low, I don't know what to roads are like where you live, but here on every speed bump I have to go like 5 to 10 km/h, if I go faster I scrape the front bumper..
If you have any questions about the car, let me know.

Also, if you buy it, make sure it was well maintained !! especially if all the fluids (motor oil, auto gearbox oil, etc..) have been changed when needed !