Mini Merc (Mercedes-Benz A140 Classic)

Name: Dom

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Product:	Mercedes-Benz A140 Classic
Date:	25/11/02 (4011 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unusual, Merc quality

Disadvantages: vision, spartan extras

Having got rid of the Range Rover I have gone for something that is better suited to my needs and went out and bought a secondhand Merc A Class 140 Classic with the clutchless gear setup.

Alot has been written about these cars on these pages and I can say that the car is everything that has been said before, the one I have is the smallest of the engines sizes but for its weight and size it is quite nippy, the ride is certainly different to the Range Rover and feels much more connected to the road, firm seems to be everyones adjective. The view is somewhat restricted due to the enormous struts at the front of the car, but a prob that most midi's like this suffer from.

The clutchless gear operation is smooth and after a bit of use becomes actually very easy to use and the smoothness makes driving very simple and you wonder whether the clutch is going the way of the dinosaur.

My only issue is that the car i bought decided that 4th and reverse were no goes, and after a week in the Merc dealership awaiting a new gate kind of soured the whole experince. That said I spoke with a number of dealers wondering whether this set up is more or less expensive to service etc and the verdict is that it is about £0 more as this covers some oil replacement that isonly found on these set ups.

Only had it a few days but it gets my approval, easy to drive, perky when you want it to be, roomy as hell, and looks different enough to satisfy my need for cars that are slighlty unusual..
UPDATE

Now had the car abit longer and am still pleased with it few things maybe to note..

Ride - I have now taken it round some country roads and decided to see how it handled which was enlightening. The car went from feeling very solid to extremely twitchy when cornering at speed. There was the natural tendency for the car to dive into corners but with newish tyres it still held its line albeit with a feeling of vertigo as am still getting used
to the ride height compared with my old BMW.

The ride is really quite hard, drove a cobbled street in Richmond and everything rattled and bounced even at low speed, not a big issue really..

Fuel - absolutely amazing, cannot believe how little it drinks very impressed!

Space - not as good as first thought, I am relatively normal height 6ft, and with my seat in a comfy position its leaves very little room for passengers feet so I think that the newer longer wheelbase car is better..

Vision - due to size of screen and shape of car they Merc guys could only put the rear view mirror slap bang in the middle which takes abit of getting used to and annoyed me at first.

Gizmos - well they had problems with sability so Merc installed wizardry that prevents anything bad happening. Good news is you can overide the ASR thingy which pushes a few more revs and as such turns the car in to a more entertaining drive and with practice you can get some rather fun slides out when you have the urge. The little ! icon flashes at you if you push it hard and you can actually feel the stability kick in when it gets too much!

Anyway there ya go

Summary: