This is my original blog for all our non-caravanning trips since 2009 and more recently posts about coming to terms with being single again having been widowed in 2018. And anything else too really!

My caravanning blog is (Get Your) Legs Down and all our trips in the caravan are there. My grog blog is The Ale Archive where I list every beer I’ve ever tried.

Monday 16 June 2014

Richards Wrecks – Number Eight

Yep, finally got my backside in to gear again and  memories of my motley motors continues.

With the Ford Courier van (Number Seven) now doing all the grunt we decided to go for something a bit tastier and after scouring seemingly all of Brighton & Hove's second hand car dealers, we ended up with this:

PA131468 PA131465 

A 1998 Mercedes-Benz CLK 230 K Sport Auto.  2.3 litre twin cam and supercharged, this was quick and the noise when the supercharger was in full swing was divine – which was just as well as it helped distract attention from the petrol gauge. Frugal she wasn’t – around 24 mpg around town and 35 mpg on our once frequent runs up to Cambridge to pick up HRH, otherwise known as Trev’s Mum. But we didn’t buy it to save money and the annual mileage we clocked up was so low she was more like an expensive ornament.

A ‘premium’ brand Mercedes may be but this particular one wasn’t without it’s problems. Steering wasn’t heavy but felt a little uninvolved  and vague.  The paintwork didn’t seem particularly durable, suffering from a number of stone chips and rust around the wheel arches, although this may have been due to spending it’s life on the coast with all that nice salty sea air that corrodes anything on sight. The alarm packed up and so did the reversing lights. However, she had over 103,000 miles on the clock by the time we traded her in after around 5 years and the engine still sounded beautiful. It was still a lovely car to drive – there’s a nice decadent feeling about driving a nice powerful petrol powered automatic. Unbelievably my first real wheel drive car too.