And you lot claim Alfas are rot-boxes

"The car was repainted before I bought it - as you would expect with a car that had done 143000 miles in less than 6 years."

???

cheers, clive

That puzzled me, too.

I know Mercedes had some issues around that time, but how could they get it so absolutely wrong?

I have no idea, but my Celsior, no matter how pikey you might think it is has nothing like that level of corrosion.

It has one small patch of bubbling on the drivers door which you don't immediatly spot, and some stone chips.

That is incredibly bad build quality if it genuinly hasn't been crashed.

Was that 143k miles only driven down a saltmine.

It's a mid-90s W210, 'they all do that, Sir'

Thank god I chose a quality executive car then.

Post corrected.

Two new wings, at least one rear arch, painting both sides, probably a new cross member too. Thick end of £1500 for that lot.

Still not a bad buy for 5.5k if its otherwise ok? ??

Tim..

He didn't quote the current mileage, and they also rot elsewhere - the odds are it'll bubble up from other places (boot lid, bonnet) before long, too.

You'd be very lucky to get away with £1500 - even at cash-in-hand rates, IMHO.

I have a 1994 E34 BMW 525i. 178k miles without any body rust at all, and apart from the bonnet, original paintwork. For it's year that MB is in a terrible state. Mike.

You just know it's gonna have a £50 back hander respray and be punted onto some unsuspecting mug.

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate Elder, managed to produce the following words of wisdom

The W210s have a major rot problem between 95-98. They pretty much cured it in '98 though - the same time the rust warranty doubled.

It wasn't unknown for early W210s to have chassis legs and roofskins replaced under warranty, some cars having plenty of panels replaced.

As for the repairs costing £1500, the one good thing is not every 95-98 W210 was a rotbox, some were fine, but even so the trade are incredibly wary of them now. I get offered W210s for silly low money on an almost daily basis by the trade, quite a lot are fine but the rusty ones are bad enough to scare anyone off.

An "R" reg E320 (petrol) which had recently had a full respray went for £480 in my local "bargain" auction house, decent length mot, interior was leather and a-ok and the motor sounded sweet but it had three owners in two years and no history. Looked like a nice car but even the sheepskins were scared of what it might hide.

Alternative spellings of the same thing always mean the same thing.

AFAIK MB are still replacing front crossmembers even on cars that aren't covered by the warranty anymore (or so Car Mechanics suggested, IIRC). The front crossmember is especially nasty as it's not visible from underneath so even a freshly MOT'd car may have a somewhat holey one.

Those Mercs are s**te for rusting. Seems to be that particular model.

No, no no.

The bit about Alfas rusting is so last century.

This century's "Reason To Avoid" is dead engines.

The Autotrader and Ebay are full of mint 156s that 'just' need an engine.

That is irony elevated to a level hitherto unseen.

It's why I spent more and got a W211.

Bootlids go on estates, but leaky boots cause boot floor seams to go. Probably worth a punt if the boot is solid, parts not that dear.

You should have spent less and got a proper Merc - a W124 E300TD - not one of the plastic and tin foil heaps of crap they flog these days ;-)

Ahem. The few E300TDs around seem to command major moolah - too much IMHO.