i purchased a virtually unused, one owner, 1997 c140 last april.

fully starmarked.

when i went to pick it up, before leaving the san antonio dealer's lot at 3:30pm on a friday afternoon, when adjusting the rear view mirror with the salesman, i noticed that the mirror was broken. the salesman said don't worry, i shall have a replacement sent to you.

apparently, this mirror is not a starmark item. after 6 months of hassling them from houston, my indy finally coerced them into coughing up the replacement[approx $1,000 from a m-b dealer]. he buys lots of parts from them.

still, i didn't like the attitude of the san antonio benz dealer in this matter. much wafffling and attempts to avoid fulfilling their promises. the dealer written responses read like a bush press conference. i went to the written level because they would orally tell me that they were going to replace the mirror, but would never execute their oral promises.

so, whatever you do, check out the rear view mirror at your first inspection, and again before you complete the transaction. i say this because the mirror was ok when i inspected the car, and apparently was broken in the interim before i returned to pick up the car.


now, it is a far superior handling car than my 560sec. it allows for a good 10-20 mph higher speed on back road twisties. and it offers more hp and torque. and with a slipperier body, it seems to offer 20%-30% better fuel economy over the same routes of travel at similar or higher speeds.

i found the o.e. shoes[michelins] inadequate. didn't stop the car very well, weren't confidence building in the wet, and were imprecise. and noisy in what should be an extraordinarily quiet interior. at the recommendation of an LA KCRW radio broadcast called the CAR SHOW[by the way, this is a show that should be picked up by national public radio to replace CAR TALK. it is far superior], i replaced the o.e.'s with the recently introduced Dunlop SP Sport A2's. in terms of handling and braking, these shoes moved the vehicle up to a higher level of performance.

the next issue that you should investigate is the functioning of the seats automatic up-and back when you move the seat back forward to access the back seats. i didn't do this for the passenger seat when i inspected the car. some weeks after acquiring the car, i discovered that it didn't do what it should do. it didn't do what the driver's seat did.

and then, in another couple of weeks, the driver's seat stopped doing it as well. by "it" i mean that the seat backs could no longer be moved forward, they were locked.

apparently, this is controlled by a computer chip that i think to be identified as a customer convenience module. to correct this problem, it must be replaced.

needless to say, closest m-b dealer in houston wants to interpret the starmark warranty as not encompassing this situation. and m-b customer care in nj responds to my letters by not addressing the issue.

in a sense, this has soured me on the car. and i haven't driven it in four months. i am debating whether to keep it. i wondered about starmarking as being a gimmick and i am finding that it well may be - especially if your closest dealership is owned by autonation.

i paid extra for the starmark extended warranty, but based on my observations of the houston north dealership, i may just abandon it and have my very conscientious indy take care of it, if i keep it. benz dealers are just no freaking good. in fact, it was their badness that caused me to stop buying new benzes and look for good, low mileage used ones.

and i have found some other issues that prevent me from loving this car. it is impossible to have a clear view of where the car is - it has big blind spots. can be very scary in heavy traffic. i find my w126, c126, and c124 much easier to place in traffic at speed.

and the acoustical isolation, which i thought i would enjoy, i find makes driving more diffficult. i think i can drive my 126's, my 124 more easily because of the aural inputs that they provide. at least, i am learning that they allow for a more relaxed drive at high speed in traffic. i mean, i can almost drive those cars by my ears alone.

and then there is the center console. i hate it. i generally drive with a coffee pot and a cup of coffee. in my 126's, no problem, they are 1986-1987 models and have a center console that is not a container[some of you out there will remember that user-friendly design]. and though my e320cab had a container style center console, i removed the passenger side sodium azide bag, replaced it with a glovebox, and restored the center console to 126 status -coffee cup friendly.

if you want to drive the c140 with a cup of coffee, you are going to have to find a properly sized hot beverage container to fit the cup holders[benz is bad at cup holders]. but the craziest thing is that you are then going to have to drive with the console top raised to the vertical position. if this isn't silly, i don't know what is.

furthermore, i prefer the keys of my other benzes. the key for this car is a load. it is clunky. it is large. it is a bad design not well thought out.

lastly, the car is so much larger than my others that it overwhelms modern parking places in parking lots. it is a vehicle that screams to any vehicle parked adjacent to it, "DING ME".

I LOVE IT. BUT I HATE IT.

i trust that you understand. if this car had not been owned by a very elderly couple who never drove it, 20,000 miles in 6 years in a city in which there is never any snow[road salts], never any salt air, i would not be writing this review.

all things considered, i prefer a 1986-87 c126. or a c124.

my 2 cents