Nearly new CLK320

This is the third "new" Mercedes I have ever owned. The first two were 1985 and 1987 Mercedes 190D and D-Turbos which were my daily drivers when I operated my commercial insurance business here in Maine. I expect to drive this CLK year round on GOOD, DRY days only and will fit the car with winter tires in the fall. This car is not a highly optioned car, although it does have zenon headlights, compact disc player and rear window shade. Note the 16" wheels which are mandatory (in my opinion) since I live in a fairly rural area where most roads are rough and uneven. Our roughly paved surfaces love to eat up nice, big modern wheels! I think the 16-inchers will last much longer than would wider wheels.
The car also have sunroof and is the black shown over charcoal interior. In normal use for us here, we are averaging around twenty-five miles per gallon. The vast majority of our driving is on two lane, hilly and twisty roads and we have had the car only once on the Interstate for a distance of around forty miles.
Since the car is so "new" considering it's sixteen year age, I had the car appraised by an experienced and well known specialty European car/Mercedes dealer. I decided to do so to establish a baseline for this car should I need to argue with an insurance company for some reason or other. Based on the appraisal, I got a bargain.
The interior is much darker than this photo shows in the early morning bright sunshine. The dealer's photos showed the interior like this also and I questioned the dealer since the build sheet for the car indicated a much darker interior which was explained to me. My wife had specifically stated that she would prefer my next car to have a light color interior but considering the mileage, I knew this was the right car. Now after riding in the car and actually driving it, my wife is convinced that color or no color, this is THE car for us. We made one trip to Sam's Club and Walmart (a 110 mile round trip) and with the rear seat backs folded down, it was amazing that our three months' worth of stable items fit inside and with more room to bear had we really packed very carefully. We are very pleased with the added utility of this slick coupe and can leave the truck in the garage for only those really heavy loads and of course, for when the winter weather mandates all wheel drive!







