Mercedes CLK320 | Shed of the Week
Hot fun in the summertime? You betcha...
Shed doesn't like the hot weather much. That's because one of his regular customers from the village, a scatty old dear called Gladys, has a quite a crush on him and uses any trick she can to lure him into her vestibule. Once he's in there she picks up a violin and screeches out her own unique versions of Gilbert & Sullivan tunes. When it's hot, like it is now, she will pass the back of her hand across her brow between each tune, shout 'oh it's so damn hot isn't it!' and seductively undo another button on her viscose top. By the time she's got to Tit Willow and a few snatches of When The Foeman Bares His Steel from The Pirates of Penzance Shed is pulling nervously at his collar and wishing he was back in the eyeball-poppingly firm but strangely comforting embrace of Mrs Shed.
You can therefore see why he doesn't like the hot weather much and why, by extension, he doesn't like convertible cars very much. Still, he accepts that he might be in the minority on this one so today he is setting his prejudices aside to bring you this Mercedes CLK320. It's got a few miles on it, 150k in fact, but Shed believes that a car with miles and a good service history is often superior to a low-miler that's been sat gathering cobwebs in a leaky old garage.
The C209's six cylinders were in a vee configuration and produced a peak output of around 220hp. The V6 was described as 'silky' with 'an excellent automatic gearbox' by one leading UK car mag, and maybe also by some lagging-behind car mags. Its 229lb ft of torque came in at 3,000rpm and in terms of hard performance it would do the 0-62 in 8.2sec and top out at 150mph.
That was back in period of course, and there's many a slip twixt coupe and quivering bottom lip. Something untoward seems to be tainting this one's nearside wheelarch but Shed thinks it's a scrape rather than the expected (for Mercs of a certain age) corrosion. Your main concerns will probably hinge, or not, on the electronic roof. Early C209 convertibles like this one were built by Karmann before production shifted in 2004 to Bremen. The three-layer soft-top could be operated by the key fob at the kerbside or on the move, kind of, at speeds of up to 5mph. It seems to be working here, but Shed can’t be sure because you could operate it manually if you had to, which you did when the electronics gave up trying to align the latches or the tank holding the hydraulic fluid for the system turned out to be as dry as a camel's bum. Sometimes it was just a fuse or a microswitch that had gone AWOL. Either way it wasn't terminal.
Our shed is in the sporty Avantgarde spec which included tinted glass, aluminium cabin trim, stiffer springs, thicker anti-roll bars, 15mm lower ride height and 18-inch 5-spoke wheels like the ones you see here, or maybe not. They don't look Merc-y somehow but someone on the forum will no doubt put us straight on that. Non-excessive wear to one of the rear ARB bushes was mentioned at the MOT test in February along with the accursed 'product' which blights the headlamp lenses of so many Benzes from this era. The ad tells us that the car has a 'steel collapsible' but Shed can't throw any light on that.
Otherwise there's nothing bad to talk about. When okaying the car in 2022 the tester thought that the noise from the back end might be caused by dust buildup in the brake drums. Yes, that's right, the 2003 Mercedes CLK320 had brake drums on the back wheels. Shed pretended to be an MOT tester for a while as it seemed like easy money but eventually remorse set in and he took down his home-made MOT's Done Here sign, complete with correctly redundant apostrophe. He's still got it stored safely round the back though just in case he ever needs a quick fifty off Gladys.
However, I've never thought the shape well-resolved of any of Merc's 4 seater convertibles, so a no from me! Still, good to see one for shed money in summer - if it checks out OK in the flesh, then it could be a nice car for someone.
Could be fun for a while until it goes bang.
That V6 is more reliable than the later 3.5 which had the balancer shaft issues, too.
Agree with humphra above though, the 4 seat convertibles look a bit…ungainly, to me, certainly when the roof is up. Quite like the CLK coupe however, and have been tempted a couple of times before wondering if I’d find them a bit dull for B road driving, having been used to numerous BMWs.
So, one Friday afternoon we had to sort a car out for him as he had to get back to Scotland, we bounced some ideas back and forth and camr up with a CLK.
Found one locally, rang the guy, still available and he was on his way out and would be passing ours so could drop in and show it us, he turned up, we bought it, 2005 CLK 220D coupe, 100 ish k miles, new brakes and a few other bits done, tyres all good and enough MOT. Gave it a clean and a once over and dispatched him back to Prestwick in it on the Sunday.
He did 10,000 miles in it over the next 18 months, didnt miss a beat, did 45 mpg on a run, about 30 locally. No rust to speak of, only thing it needed was a thermostat that he did with some help from my dad, think it cost £30.
I used to borrow it and it had that air of comfortable old shoes about it, not fast by any means but quick enough, you just relaxed into it. It was very comfortable, quiet and soothing to drive, didnt really care where we left it. It scrubbed up well,
Sold it for £1450, wasnt a huge amount of interest, and it was a fairly nice one with fresh MOT, some of them are utter hounds from sketchy sellers, and not sure whether the V6's are worth more or less than the diesels, a 320 will be quite expensive to run, but obviously faster and nicer.
I would have another, really rate them, would fancy the 5.5 non AMG V8, though MNStewart, PHer who takes Ferraris to bits and improves them has had the faster ones and I tend to agree with him that the platform is perhaps not up to the AMG engines, he has a 350 V6, that appears to be the goldilocks, not too hot, not too cool version, his is like new, most arent by now.
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