Srdl: Thank you for your caveat in regards to future costs of maintenance.Lovely car and at least you now know what the potential downsides are. Depends on your maintenance budget I suppose. Perhaps add a few grand to the £20k purchase price and set it aside for any future problems!
Lost Kiwi: Thank you for your complex, but quite understandable explanation of ABC = Active Body Control and SBC Sensotronic Braking System which is greatly appreciated.
Lost Kiwi: Thank you for this hugely detailed response which is greatly appreciated.
Craig: I am awaiting a call from the vendor which I am hoping will be tomorrow. At least when I view the machine, and thanks to the generous response from members of this Forum, I shall be in a far more confident position than I would have been had I not sought advice. So we must now wait to see what the morrow will bring.
John, It's a little after ten o'clock and I have just received a telephone call from the vendor. He explained that he is presently a little pressed for time due to a hand-over of a car and one or two other matters of a pressing nature. He is to telephone again later in the day when he will have the time to explain the car in detail. For the present, the vendor has advised that the machine has had eight owners and this does rather concern me. He also said that they know the car well having sold it to the most recent owner; they also sold it to the preceding custodian. My anxiety about cars that have been in the hands of numerous owners is that some owners may not always have had the long term interest of the machine at the forefront of their minds, and therefore may perhaps have handled the machine in a harsh manner which may impact upon an owner some distance down the road. I can also understand that any machine should be judged on its merits and I doubt that the vendor, having sold the car twice, would wish to risk his reputation by selling a machine that has questionable integrity. What is your view, please, on cars that have been in mutli-ownership? Furthermore, what is the general opinion of others on this Forum in regards to this question? Thank you to everyone for helping me on this matter for which I am most grateful.
Wighty: Thank you so much for your prompt response which is greatly appreciated. I am hoping to get further opinions from members of the Forum which will assist me in forming a balanced perspective.
Flowrider: Thank you for your kind response. And yes, I can see the logic in what you say; it almost makes a multi-owner machine more desirable and no doubt in the eyes of the vendor, more valuable. I can see future adverts for motor cars reading: "This is a really excellent Mercedes-Benz motor car with the extremely desirable virtue and enormous benefit of multi ownership; indeed this car has had twenty four owners in two years all of which have burnished it to the nth degree such that the paintwork is like wet-glass. All owners have changed the oil every fortnight. None of them have ever driven it in the rain. The first to see will buy
