As some of you may have noticed, I'm now more or less seriously looking for some wheels. The winter won't last forever, so chances to drift are becoming scarce..
and I'm beginning to despise public transport (not public's transport, mind).
Problem is, the good cars have all disappeared and we're left with either utter crap or merely crappish cars. Anyway, to see what we're up against, we found our way to a green W201 Mercedes-Benz 190E. 263tkm, 4-speed manual, 2.0l petrol. Basic daily runabout, it would seem. And the asking price of 1750e seemed fair, especially if I could pull it down to ~1500e.
http://img36.imageshack.**/img36/8040/mercedesbenz1902996546l.jpg
First impressions:
Very neat, looking good. No rust to be seen. Interior seemed ok. Engine started as if it were brand new. I gave it a bit of boot through the backroads, and handling was great. The problems started when we reached the service station and a bit of light.
public realized there's about 10 years of ownership-history missing. Nothing to account for the kilometres from that time? Not a good thing. Also this:
The driver's side door was heavily rusted. Definitely lowered my enthusiasm. But I didn't give up yet. Driving back though, we noticed something else: 2nd gear was horribly hard to engage, and the diff gave out a bit of a clunk in each gearchange. public talked me into reconsidering, this was not a good deal.
I asked the seller if he would consider an offer of 1400e. He did not. We walked.
While filling up, I contacted a certain BrotherMichael, who was cruising the neighbourhood in his impose-o-mobile. So we set up a mini-#gear.fi-meet, which consisted of warmness and closeness, as we Finns are famous for.
But soon after we got to hearing a valuable third opinion from Bromic, regarding big cars, Mercs, Audis and the Kummeli-series.
What now? Well. There's a prime example of a Merc 300TE for sale in Eastern Finland. We already got three guys with nothing better to do, two good cars and alot of open road. Roadtrip, anyone?