Until a year ago we were a two Merc family as I was driving a CLK320 whilst my wife had an oldish SLK230.
The SLK was a really Friday afternoon dog that would never start if left alone for more than a few days necessitating a trailer to the dealer every time we went on holiday. I finally lost patience with it and part exchanged it for a Z4 3.0 which was a much nicer car all round.
My own CLK went a year ago in part exchange for an Alpina B10 which was a wonderful car in every respect as it was fast, comfortable and reliable with much better handling and ride than a standard Beemer but after a year the familiar itch returned and I started to look around again.
I wanted a convertible and drew up a short list comprising Porsche 911, Maserati Spyder and Merc SL. I discarded the 911 after driving it as whilst it was a wonderfully sporty car I do have the occasional 400 mile round trip to Brighton and thought that the Porsche would be too noisy with a very firm ride to be relaxing for long distance work. I really wanted to buy the Mazzer as I'm old enough to remember when it was one of the great names and thought long and hard but in the end decided that the downside in terms of potential costs to keep it on the road would be too high so I turned my mind to the SL, test drove one and was immediately sold on the idea.
I spent a while looking for an early SL500 but couldn't find one that I liked so turned my attention to it's baby brother the SL350 and found a 2004 one owner car with only 24,500 miles on the clock and bought it.
Hopefully it will be more reliable than our late SLK but I know that if I have any problems there is always a Television close at hand to ask advice from
The SLK was a really Friday afternoon dog that would never start if left alone for more than a few days necessitating a trailer to the dealer every time we went on holiday. I finally lost patience with it and part exchanged it for a Z4 3.0 which was a much nicer car all round.
My own CLK went a year ago in part exchange for an Alpina B10 which was a wonderful car in every respect as it was fast, comfortable and reliable with much better handling and ride than a standard Beemer but after a year the familiar itch returned and I started to look around again.
I wanted a convertible and drew up a short list comprising Porsche 911, Maserati Spyder and Merc SL. I discarded the 911 after driving it as whilst it was a wonderfully sporty car I do have the occasional 400 mile round trip to Brighton and thought that the Porsche would be too noisy with a very firm ride to be relaxing for long distance work. I really wanted to buy the Mazzer as I'm old enough to remember when it was one of the great names and thought long and hard but in the end decided that the downside in terms of potential costs to keep it on the road would be too high so I turned my mind to the SL, test drove one and was immediately sold on the idea.
I spent a while looking for an early SL500 but couldn't find one that I liked so turned my attention to it's baby brother the SL350 and found a 2004 one owner car with only 24,500 miles on the clock and bought it.
Hopefully it will be more reliable than our late SLK but I know that if I have any problems there is always a Television close at hand to ask advice from
