1999 Mercedes-Benz A-Class – The “A” Stands for “Aveo”

Mercedes-Benz A170 CDI. Possibly the least hoonable car ever.

With fuel prices rising and a 20-year-old 2.4-litre executive saloon in my stable, it’s not a bad idea to look at something less consumptious – especially when most of my driving is commuting. Cold starts and general wintertime usage drop the fuel needle even quicker. Combine that with the nagging idea to get rid of both of my cars and replacing them with something a decade newer and you have the (admittedly vague) reasoning behind today’s used car test drive.

The W168 A-Class is an interesting proposition to behold. After the success of the first small Mercedes that was the W201 190E, I can see the thought process that went into the urban little Mercedes – and with the similarly designed smart/Smart Car in the pipeline, who would blame them? Of course, the cheapening of the Mercedes-Benz brand from attainable prestige (the standing point of the W202, the then-smallest and cheapest Mercedes) to something akin to the Pacer was such a daring shift that M-B USA chose not to ship the A-Class stateside. Though, had US buyers had to deal with the all-encompassing basicness that was the W202 C180 Classic with hard cloth seats and crank windows, the A-Class wouldn’t have come as such a shock.

I was also curious to face the car from a newly retro Year 2000 standpoint: in my mind it sits next to the transparent iMac of a decade ago. But as I wouldn’t really want to use one of those on a daily basis, how about the Mercedes, then?

Moving back to Northern Europe where this 1999 A170 CDI has spent its lifetime, it’s not a rare sight on our roads. Despite the initial PR blunder involving negotiating unexpected antlered ruminants, the A-Class sold reasonably well here and some of them have swam here as used exports. The inclusion of the 1.7-litre turbodiesel in the range has seen some of the A-Classes reach stellar mileage, but this metallic graphite-violet car has only passed the 170k km mark, or a little above 100k miles if you will. With an asking price of 5400 eur, it’s in the same general ballpark as a comparable Volkswagen Golf MkIV sits – and having spent a chunk of my Christmas holidays in one of those, they are in good recent memory.

So, this December afternoon in my town is a miserable point of existence in the space-time-continuum of ours. There’s nothing wrong with the town itself, but the weather here has been disappointingly slushy and wet – freezing only to the point that ice accumulates on streets, forming jarring ruts, but still being snowy and wet enough that your shoes and ankles are soaked at the slightest step outside. This means I’m sure as hell doing my commuting in the relative comfort of a used car, not by foot or bicycle – and doing some town driving in the Merc would form the core of the credibility test.

Stepping (yeah, the sandwich floor is high) into the A-Class, one experiences a swath of curved, violet-grey plastic. Had the exterior color of the car been a more cheerful one, so would be the dashboard; on a green car the dash is light green, the hue of something spearmint-flavored. The instruments are laid out in a way that a recently graduated design student lays them out: a round shape here, a kink there – but within the assigned limits of funkiness. We’re still talking Sprockets* here. Every plastic surface is hard knock, which gives a feel that the budget has been attended to.

There are benefits to the Benz’s balloon shape. Around here, it gets dark at three to four in the afternoon, and it’s really often drizzling – so you actually need to be able to see out of the car. With the high floor and large windows, you do really see what is happening around the Mercedes, even when you’re dead tired after work and heading to the supermarket. And there’s good space in the trunk or in the cabin for your grocery bags, as the floor is flat.

Add sharp, confidence-inspiring brakes (and good winter tires) into the mix and we’ve comfortably wrapped up the positive part of this review. The treatment gets worse from now on.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it, the ride on the Mercedes is sub-par. The aforementioned icy ruts make the whole car jitter and hunt with something in the back sounding loose; on smoother surface it’s only reasonable. Speed bumps are awkward. Outside of town corners and on well-salted, ice free asphalt it feels more stable, but I can bet my bottom dollar any highway ruts will make it really, really shifty.

The suspension probably felt better before the car was anaesthetized in search of rollover prevention; but harder springs and wider tires just make it really jarring as a runabout. Gripping the helm and concentrating on the handling, the steering isn’t bad and the car turns on a dime, and good visibility helps here – but as you don’t crave to go anywhere with it, this doesn’t comfort you much. As a final touch, the car has ESP fitted that goes by the name of Buzz Killington.

I had visioned the turbodiesel as a relatively perky unit, in the vein of the swiftly-moving Volkswagen 1.9 TDI, but grunt is not really present here. From standstill, you negotiate the slightly dodgy-feeling clutch (possibly a trait of this example), and for a while there’s nothing happening. With the pedal in the carpet, forward progress is initiated but not commended; the audible whine of the turbo confirms the engine is working with whatever it has but it falls short of expectations of express.

Admittedly, one should not expect wonders from a 1.7-litre turbodiesel from the ’90s, especially since it only has 90 hp, but if the A-Class were to cut mustard as a jack-of-all-trades usable commuter car it should have a satisfying amount of go. And with the gearshift so low between the seats, having to shuffle between gears too often isn’t something you would want to do; in town, you should be able to leave it in some gear that would just do and the diesel’s torque would find a way to work around it. This is not exactly how it goes with the Merc.

As I returned the car and inspected it in the garage’s lighting, I didn’t see as much rust as I had expected the car to have. There were dents and scrapes on the bodywork, but the paint had kept a good shine – and as a decontented ’90s Mercedes it was really as little rusty as it could reasonably be, with only some door corner specks present, able to be rectified easily. I had a look at a silver A170 CDI earlier, and that one was ridiculously peppered with rust from the beltline down.

Underneath, the A-Class is extensively paneled with protective plastic, but what I saw of the suspension components there wasn’t much browning present. And this one is a well-kept two-owner car with a fully stamped logbook and a clean cabin – as an example there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this exact car, save for the mirror switch having come off the dash. There’s no Klimatizierung, but there’s Standheizung; so the car doesn’t keep cool in the summer but maintains heat in the winter. You figure, which is more needed in Finland.

If I really wanted to save on running costs, I’d shelve the Sapporo and only really drive the Mazda – or then replace the Mazda with a similarly-priced used old diesel Jetta. But if I wanted a newer car for the reliability and comfort, the Merc isn’t what I’d go for; any surfaces less than perfect will reveal its shortcomings, and the amount of stick that ’90s M-B:s have received for their build quality has been deserved.

Driving home in my cosseting, velour-soft Mitsu, I could really appreciate the comfort of a sofa-like old Japanese saloon. Japanese Mercedes? Only if it’s compared to the Mercedes that deserve to be compared to it. The whole point of my Mitsubishi is that it isn’t an appliance but something that makes the ride home like a Sunday drive; the A-Class would turn a Sunday afternoon into a Monday morning.

*) Sprockets

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