I really hate up badges. S320's with S600 badges are a joke.
Especially when you pull up to them with a real S600 and put them to shame.
Anyway we picked up the car yesterday and so far have a luke warm feeling about it.
The owner was a pretty slick guy who may have been hiding a few things.
First off he raved about how nice the car was and was wondering why we were not thanking him for selling us a $21K(book value) car for $11,550. He even questioned my MB knowledge.
I didn't tell him what I was really thinking, the car is decent but it ain't the best W140 out their and is far from the best one I have seen. Then he kept saying it is a $21k car and I shut him down by saying I was looking at an S500 for $16.5k a few months back that was about as close to perfect as a picky person could expect. He didn't even know what the W/S button on the console was for.
Anyway the body and interior are nice, from what I can tell so far it is a one owner around town car. The guy we bought it from didn't have it for long. He also told me their were maintaince records yet when I got to the car their were none.
However all of the fluids look pretty clean and it seems to have good German filters in it so I think it was maintained. A few interior bits are broken but nothing really show stopping.
There are however two major problems.
1. He tried to fix the drivers side mirror with epoxy. The idiot got it all over the freakend side of the door and didn't wipe it off.
So it looks like along with a new mirror the door will have to be resprayed. &*(^*()^(*() I wish he left it broken I probably could have fixed the mirror.
2. The check engine light came on 100 miles into the trip on the way home. Now this is where this guy gets slick. When we first looked at the car the battery was dead so he hooked it up to one of those battery packs and the car started fine. But the CE light came on. Now at first I suspected that maybe the low voltage triggard it so we disconnected the battery and it went away. It stayed off for 100 miles before it came back on. Now it gets better when I was looking the engine over I found a sensor disconnected, at the time it didn't click I though maybe the plug popped off. So I just plugged it back in. Now I think that sensor is the MAP sensor and may be causing this CE light. Over the next few days we will bring it to Autozone to get the codes read and take it from their.
So the jurry is still out on whether we got a good deal or not. My gut feeling is the car is basicaly sound and solid. Once we deal with these issues I think it will prove to be a good buy. Hopefully I am not wrong...