We purchased our first SLK in March 1998. The first sports car we had owned. It was sitting there in the local Mercedes dealer's showroom and following a test drive we decided to buy it.
At the time, this Mercedes dealership afforded a first class service and was a pleasure to deal with, but more about that in another opinion.
What a brilliant piece of engineering this car was with it's folding roof, watching the whole thing disappear into the boot at the touch of a button.
The bodywork was finished in silver with a black leather interior, the best combination, in my opinion. It had the standard 7 spoke polished alloys fitted and again, these 16" wheels suited the car really well. Later styles of 16" wheels fitted to the facelift SLK 230 are not so appealing in my view.
Out on the road the super-charged 4 cylinder engine was more than capable, developing 193bhp and had a distinctive exhaust note.
Although only a small 2-seater sports car you always felt safe in one of these with the list of safety features fitted as standard. Excellent brakes and the usual Mercedes build-quality. An easy car to drive with it's smooth 5 speed automatic gearbox and improved still further on the facelift models with the 'tip function' which offers semi-manual operation.
When driving with the roof down ensure the wind deflector is fitted across the roll bars if you do not like it too windy.
We had this first SLK 230 just over 2 years. It covered 22,000 miles with no problems. One new set of tyres was fitted and it was serviced by the main dealer twice - aproximately every 9,000 miles.
A few other points to mention - serving is expensive - which is to be expected. A little thirsty regarding fuel consumption, averaging around 25mpg. Not a lot of luggage space when the roof is down.
Finally should you be unfortunate enough to get a puncture, a lot of messing about is involved fitting the temporary space-saver spare wheel.
We part-exchange this silver one for a new upgrade SLK 230 and kept that one for 4 years. Again another excellent car with no problems.
If thinking about purchasing one I would highly recommend them. There should still be plenty of good ones out there to choose from. However, I would recommend main dealer full service history.
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Owning an SLK230 which had been fully serviced over the years and well maintained, it suddenly developed an engine fault which made the car stutter and not reach it's rev range, which in turn made it undrivable. It was duly deposited with a local "Mercedes Expert" - not! who diagnosed an electronic component which cost almost £400, so total bill was around £500. After about a week, the engine was running worse than ever. As I had no faith in the last cowboy I gave the car to another garage who did have a "Mercedes Expert". This time they correctly diagnosed the fault - a small, cheap, oil seal had failed, which allowed oil to syphon up through the engine wiring loom, destroying various electronic parts - but fortunately hadn't reached the ECU - yet, so avoided an even greater expense. My eventual bill for all this was almost £1200, and when I asked the garage if this could happen again I was assured it couldn't as the new wiring loom contained an £8 seal modification which prevented all this. I was stunned by this, as it was obvious Mercedes had been aware of this problem - hence the mod. - so why - in all the Mercedes services didn't they pick up this ? and save owners a very expensive fix ? maybe they make the assumption that if you own a car like this then you well afford to pay for very costly mistakes ? Be warned.
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