Yep, finally got my backside in to gear again and memories of my motley motors continues.
With the Ford Courier van (Number Seven) now doing all the grunt we decided to go for something a bit tastier and after scouring seemingly all of Brighton & Hove's second hand car dealers, we ended up with this:
A 1998 Mercedes-Benz CLK 230 K Sport Auto. 2.3 litre twin cam and supercharged, this was quick and the noise when the supercharger was in full swing was divine – which was just as well as it helped distract attention from the petrol gauge. Frugal she wasn’t – around 24 mpg around town and 35 mpg on our once frequent runs up to Cambridge to pick up HRH, otherwise known as Trev’s Mum. But we didn’t buy it to save money and the annual mileage we clocked up was so low she was more like an expensive ornament.
A ‘premium’ brand Mercedes may be but this particular one wasn’t without it’s problems. Steering wasn’t heavy but felt a little uninvolved and vague. The paintwork didn’t seem particularly durable, suffering from a number of stone chips and rust around the wheel arches, although this may have been due to spending it’s life on the coast with all that nice salty sea air that corrodes anything on sight. The alarm packed up and so did the reversing lights. However, she had over 103,000 miles on the clock by the time we traded her in after around 5 years and the engine still sounded beautiful. It was still a lovely car to drive – there’s a nice decadent feeling about driving a nice powerful petrol powered automatic. Unbelievably my first real wheel drive car too.
