Acadianlion

I'm not sure I've posted to this particular page before, but I did sometime ago announce that I had purchased a nearly new '04 CLK 320. I bought the car from a dealer in Maryland who posted a lot of very high quality photos on the dealership website and the best photo of all was the one of the underside of the car. That convinced me that the car indeed did have only 17,460 miles since new. The car was delivered to my driveway and I was shocked to see the car was in fact as good...no, actually, better than the photos. Using the complete Carfax report and a little research through some of the odd papers and documents in the manual folder which was in the car I managed to trace down what I believe to be a 100% complete service history on this two owner car. The car was first purchased by an elderly lady who drive the car less than 700 miiles in five years. The car's title was next transferred to the lady's daughter who drove the car 16,000+ miles in Alabama before bringing the car to Virginia. The car was ALWAYS serviced by authorized Mercedes Benz dealers and it was serviced a lot, mostly due to battery being discharged.
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!

chassis

Welcome! Interesting story. The photos aren't showing. Maybe you can re-post the best one showing the vehicle.

MBpippo

Great story. Thanks for taking the time to tell us

Acadianlion

Are you SURE the photos didn't come through? When I bring this up, the photos are all there. The story is embedded.

MBpippo

Looks like you haven’t shared your Google Drive images to the world. Or you could try this... https://mbworld.org/forums/test/6199...t-picture.html