Tidy c32 estate

[Bobby Dazzler]

I sold mine when it was rock bottom. Pretty much gave it away. I should have kept it. Truly great cars as long as you buy a peach and not a lemon. If it’s only been out of @Jobsworth care for a year then this one is sure to be a great example still.

 

[clk320x]

I sold mine when it was rock bottom. Pretty much gave it away. I should have kept it. Truly great cars as long as you buy a peach and not a lemon. If it’s only been out of @Jobsworth care for a year then this one is sure to be a great example still.

Still miss mine. Monster of a car.

 

[buccal]

The C32 was my favourite, but probably because I’d owned it from new. The C55 I bought secondhand. It was never really my baby. The V8 makes a slightly nicer noise, but the supercharged V6 ain’t bad. Performance wise, nothing in it. If anything, punch off the line the C32 might just have the edge…
Funny story, long time ago I had a lorry driver mate in the C32 who’d never been out in it before. The speedo in the pre-facelift 203 is the big half moon affair. After a quick launch and accelerating to illegal speeds he said to me “why has this car got a kilometres speedo in it?” My reply, “that’s miles per hour mate, you’ve been driving those continental lorries too long”. He went a bit pale. Lol.

Reminds me when is started looking for a W210 E55 back in the day. Went to look at one wales and the chap pretty much
max ‘d it on the test drive

 

[samoht]

That’s worth the money IMO - most C32s are f***** now.

I got £5k for my estate and it had 200k on the clock with far more owners…. Chap who bought it did a restoration and put it into his collection.

I think there's something to this.

It's easy to browse online and say 'the market price is £x'. However, when you actually try to buy one of these cars you find (a) they're pretty rare (especially the estates), and (b) there are a lot out there in poor condition - they weren't the best built when new, they're 15-20 years old now, and plenty have seen high mileages.

Then you start to find out how much can go wrong with a bad one, and how much it can cost to sort.

And finally you either give up and buy something else, or you think, if you really want a small rwd ~350hp estate, maybe it's worth paying ~50% more than "market price" in order to get a car that you can enjoy, rather than one that'll spend the next year going wrong, draining a further £10k from your wallet in the process. The old 'the more expensive car to buy is the cheapest in the long run' thing.

Now, I'm not saying you couldn't find a gem at a mid-market price somewhere, and if you do you should totally buy one. But it could be a lot of waiting, travelling, arranging inspections, and then getting phone calls in which the words "barge" and "pole" are mentioned.


Alternatively you could pay a bit more for a really good car with a known history on MBClub, start driving, and be happy. It's what I did, to a certain extent, with my C55, and I honestly haven't regretted it.

 

[Jobsworth]

I think there's something to this.

It's easy to browse online and say 'the market price is £x'. However, when you actually try to buy one of these cars you find (a) they're pretty rare (especially the estates), and (b) there are a lot out there in poor condition - they weren't the best built when new, they're 15-20 years old now, and plenty have seen high mileages.

Then you start to find out how much can go wrong with a bad one, and how much it can cost to sort.

And finally you either give up and buy something else, or you think, if you really want a small rwd ~350hp estate, maybe it's worth paying ~50% more than "market price" in order to get a car that you can enjoy, rather than one that'll spend the next year going wrong, draining a further £10k from your wallet in the process. The old 'the more expensive car to buy is the cheapest in the long run' thing.

Now, I'm not saying you couldn't find a gem at a mid-market price somewhere, and if you do you should totally buy one. But it could be a lot of waiting, travelling, arranging inspections, and then getting phone calls in which the words "barge" and "pole" are mentioned.


Alternatively you could pay a bit more for a really good car with a known history on MBClub, start driving, and be happy. It's what I did, to a certain extent, with my C55, and I honestly haven't regretted it.

Tru dat. It’s easy to pick and choose with something that is common and easy to find. When you start looking for something that was rare in the first place, and even rarer now the choice gets very limited.