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Finding a Good 190E – How Hard Can It Be?

Mercedes-Benz W201. Today, two in one post.

It’s been a Benz-filled couple weeks lately; with the North Korean 190:s making the headlines I’ve been thinking of the Mercedes-Benz W201-series quite a lot. Over here, there are two kinds of W201:s driving around. The first category consists of the cars originally imported in Finland when new, which usually means well-used cars well past a quarter of a million kilometres in their respective odometers. The Finnish 190:s have something of a rock-solid reputation despite being often bitten by the rust worm; the epithet HONEST FINNISH CAR is most often attributed to a very basic, slightly brown-around-the-edges ’80s Mercedes.

What, then, isn’t considered a honest one? It’s the second category of Mercs, the German imported ones. Finnish used car import taxation changed in the early 2000:s, resulting in a flood of 190:s, W124:s, E34 and E30 BMW:s and fully loaded Audis. And like one is likely to do, naturally doubtful and wary Finns eagerly associate these imported Germans with odometer tampering. “They’ve all been clocked, you can buy a service book from a Turkish guy for pocket change”. While that might ring true with some cars in the dodgier end of the spectrum, German examples usually have less rust and better specification.

Today I’ll show you a few shots of both: a down-in-an-alley Finnish 190E and one of its latecomer brethren.

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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?

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Quick Drive: 2012 Mercedes-Benz S350 BlueTEC – don’t call it a TURBODIESEL

2012-mercedes-s350-bluetec-diesel-6

We had an ’84 Mercedes-Benz 300SD in the family. My diesel-loving stepfather randomly picked it up after wrecking his Jetta TDi. While it had a lot of issues, I loved that car. The 5-cylinder TURBODIESEL engine would propel the car approximately five seconds after the gas pedal was pressed, but when it did it, it did it with furious anger and a thick cloud of smoke. There were other problems too, such its inability to start in cold weather and the sound it made when it did start. And that is precisely what Mercedes-Benz wants you to forget, so much so that they are not even calling the new S-class diesel a “diesel” or, more properly, a “turbodiesel” – they are calling it S350 BlueTEC.

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Review: 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 Coupe

2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 Coupe
I have driven modern muscle cars and I have driven modern luxury cars, but now I have driven a luxury muscle car. The all-new 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 Coupe blends a top-tier upscale interior and an aggressive-styled exterior with a bi-polar 5.5L 32-valve aluminum V8 engine. It was a fitting chariot for my two-year marriage anniversary, so my wife and I took the car to Palm Springs for the weekend. Unbeknownst to us, it was also Biker Weekend in this California Oasis. … Continue Reading

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