Mercedes-Benz SLK230 | Shed of the Week
The SLK once boasted a two-year wait list. Now you can have one for a fiver less than a bag...
Where do you stand on rust? Obviously it's best not to stand on it at all, but what's your view on it? Would the sight of corrosion on a car that you were thinking of buying instantly disqualify it from your shortlist?
For some, it mainly depends on whether it's in sight. A bit like Mrs Shed at a wedding reception, if you can't see a bad thing you can almost forget it's there. With the right beverages to hand, you can even convince yourself that there is no bad thing.
Of course, refusing to acknowledge the certainty of rust on a car that you know is famously prone to it is like whistling a merry tune and looking the other way while someone wees on your garden fence. It's a simmering threat that you know will eventually explode rudely into your life when the MOT test comes round. It's just a matter of time. That's when you kick yourself for not sorting it out, or at least for not flogging it off in time to some other delusional fool.
Which is what seems to have happened here with this Mercedes SLK230 Kompressor. To give the dealer his due, he has made no attempt to disguise the all too visible problem on the nearside wheel arch. There may well be matching rust on the offside wing but Shed's computer screen is heaving with too much grime to make that out.
Shed himself is quite relaxed about rust. Like the SLK230, his own 25-year-old Merc has a rusty nearside wing. 1990s Mercs were made of thick lumps of proper metal, so every year or so all Shed has to do is key the heavy duty wire brush into his drill to buzz off the top layer of brown and reveal more pristine metal beneath. A quick daub of primer and a squirt of Hycote later and he's all set for another year of deeply satisfying old-school Germanic motoring. Plus he's progressively lightening the car as he goes along, adding performance.
As we all know, something went badly wrong with Mercedes metal at the turn of the century, so Shed can't guarantee that a slip of the drill while employing the same technique on this SLK wouldn't make its entire front end fall off. He wouldn't be doing that with this car though. At £995 he'd simply be getting out his old orange Black & Decker sander before thinking better of it and settling for a few strokes with a blue marker pen from WH Smiths.
Rust does also attack the boot lids and undersides of these SLKs. It would be funny to see if this car has a full M-B service history because if it did you should technically be able to claim under the company's 30 year corrosion warranty. Good luck with that.
What else? The four-pot engine is pretty gruff at the best of times, though you do get a supercharger which is always cool. The 722.6 auto gearbox is better than the manual and was meant to be sealed for life, and so it could be as long as you didn't mind the trans fluid looking like brown Windsor soup after 40,000 miles. Throttle bodies get dirty and the K40 relay module is famous for dodgy soldering, causing the engine to die and not restart and (Shed seems to recall) also leading to problems with the electric roof. The driver's side window might not seal properly and the drain holes on either side of the back bumper need to be kept clear unless you think it's a good idea to carry gallons of water around in the back of a rear-drive car. Actually, that does sound like a good idea.
You might be surprised to hear that Mercedes is still selling the SLK, or the SLC as it was renamed in 2016 in order to tie it more closely into the C-Class range. (SLK originally stood for sportlich, leicht and kurz, and the abbreviation sounded better than Sporty Light Short.) The gen-three R172 was officially discontinued last year but it still appears as a new car to buy on M-B UK's website, albeit with eight grand knocked off the £37,000 retail price of the SLC 200 Final Edition cars that British dealers are now desperately trying to shift.
That's a sad exit for a Bremen-built car that had a two-year waiting list on its launch in 1996. Nevertheless, 24 years and still limping along after a fashion is a good innings for any car in the modern era. Mercedes' own X-Class pickup has just been ignominiously canned after only three years on account of nobody buying them. The roadster's longevity is a testament to the rightness of the original Bruno Sacco design and to the public's willingness to buy Mercs that they perceive to be stylish.
We aren't given any shots of the inside of this one, which is a pity, but judging by the rest of the car and the reasonable 130,000 mileage you'd not be expecting anything too horrific. Advisories on the recently done MOT included worn rear tyres, a bit of front wheel bearing play and some moisture in one of the lights, again totally normal for the SLK.
One of the most popular questions people Google about the SLKs is 'is it a man's car?'. You'll have your own answer to that, but less than a thousand pounds for a steel-top convertible with 195hp, a 7.3sec 0-62mph time and a 147mph top end doesn't seem so bad. As regards running costs, they'll be 30mpg, £330 tax, group 34 insurance, and a felt tip pen for under a quid.
Could this era of SLK have......... dare I say it.......... future classic potential? Even if not, top down motoring for a pint less than a Steinway - bargain! 
That 320 SLK was a lovely thing. Just a shame about the rust on the front wings and the interior trim, that just seems to wear away and peel.
It is a manual. No idea where Mercedes found a manual gearbox at the time but I don’t think it was intended to go in a car. Maybe should have tried an auto.
Actually, we should have just got another MX5 (yep, we like rust).
Been meaning to sell it but lock down got in the way.
Cracking shed though, just avoid the manual.
As for a merc manual box - hideaous things. Solid as granite but hideous and often 4 speed even in the late 80s. At this time most auto boxes would really punish you for fuel economy - so a BMW auto was an immense drinker compared with their maunual equivalent - but at Merc they were so into Auto that their's was obviously a wonderful thing, in some models the stats would tell you it was evens between the manual and auto for efficiency, and I always found them to be lovely boxes to use.
Still remember my aunt had a glorious silver 1970's S-class - quite beautiful - but even as a pre-teen I could see that first, no S-Class should ever have a manual 4 speed and second that it was an utterly horrid box to use - while also looking just so wrong!! Bit like the blue velour in a mates dads series 2 Jag.
Excellent shed and a great summer buy for that price. Sell it on after the summer and I think you may well get your money back.
Anything else we have with problems we just have taken away but these two I haven't had the heart to do it.. yet..
Right now it’s off the road because the abs wants to work when your foot is no where near the middle pedal
[url
|https://thumbsnap.com/gUZM6RqY[/url]It’s a great drive, good on fuel, the supercharger whine from 3k is adictive and the gearbox is as good as the manual box in my 125i coupe
A neighbour has a newer SLK 200. The engine sounds great. In fact, all petrol SLKs seem to have nice exhaust notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krS8_xA8FdM
The SLK has never been rated(mostly slated) as a drivers car but strangely I've always liked them. Over the last few months I've been considering the last of the line SLK350 or pushing the boat out a bit more on a SLC43 AMG. I really like a folding hard top, and it is just the auto gearbox though that I would always struggle to love if I went for one.
The 4 pot engine was a little coarse but the six was a delight.
The biggest issue is rust..wheel arches and the bootlid lock..my slk32 was rusting at 7 years and as I had a full MB history it was repaired under warranty. The guy at the bodyshop told me to sell it once it was done but I stupidly kept it and two years later was repeating the process, this time out of my own pocket.
Some of the plastic around the internal trim can get chipped but you can buy touch up paint for this.
Other than that, for a grand you can't go wrong, especially in linarite blue
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