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Welcome back to another installment of “This is how you get your car crushed.” This is a 2019 Mercedes-Benz A250 … hatchback up for sale in Bellingham, Washington. If you live in the US and are wondering why you’ve never seen these zipping around, it is because we were never blessed with him. You can see how having one of these for sale in the state of Washington could be a problem. This is very clearly a Canadian-market car that made its way down to Washington where it sits today at this dealership with a really bizarre logo that doesn’t give off any kind of Parteiadler vibes. Nope, nothing strange about that.
One of my favorite colors from Mercedes-Benz in the 1980s and early 1990s is Bornite Metallic. It is a wonderful shade of light purple that could maybe pass for grey in the right lighting, but purple is a good general name for it. I don’t think I’m the only person who feels this way, as a 1991 560SEC with 8,000 miles painted in this color sold for a $78,400 at auction recently. Yes, I realize that a lot of that price is due to the fact that is a final year 560SEC with 8,000 miles on it, but compare that to a ’86 560SEC with 10,000 miles and you can see that the paint color surely played a factor in the price. Today, I came across a 1991 300SE painted in Bornite up for sale in North Carolina with just 84,000 km on it. Yes, I said kilometers. Let me explain.
Update 9/27/18: This G-Wagen sold for $17,366.89
Few things in this world are undefeated. The internet is one of them, taxes, death and then the ultimate final boss, mother nature. You can hide or try to fight it all you want, but the world very rarely has mercy on vehicles. Today’s vehicle, a 2002 Mercedes-Benz G500, was spared no mercy. Granted, this G-Wagen lives in the harsh climate of Quebec, Canada, but what this poor W463 turned into will make anyone scratch their head as to what happened. This brick on wheels has an extreme amount of rust to the point where there are holes the size of your fist in the body panels. These Gs have somewhere of a propensity to rust in some common areas, but I don’t understand how this G500 got this bad. As what it did for the value? I suppose not much.
Last week I checked out an interesting Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG that needed some help up for sale in Canada. It seems like no one wanted to give a helping hand for this car as it ended with no bids even at it’s reasonable $2,500 US starting price. Today, I ran across another C36 AMG up for sale in Canada although this one has a much different story. This 1995 is actually a Japanese-spec car that has a few little touches that set it apart from the North American-spec cars. Unlike last week’s example, this one isn’t a basket case that needs thousands of dollars to make it presentable again. In fact, it is actually pretty clean. The price? Not all that bad in my eyes.
The W202 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG has gone from being a neat little footnote in Mercedes-Benz and AMG history as being the first post-acquisition AMG car to a car that collectors are now seeking out to add them to their stable. They aren’t at the level of the 190E 2.3-16v, nor do I think they will ever be, but the demand has definitely picked up over the past year or two. Because of these cars being unloved and overlooked for as many years as they were, lots of them fell into the hands of people who used and abused them then moved on to the next cheap car. At the end of the day, this is still a W202, so its tenancy to rust is always a major issue as well as some other things that plague the chassis such as the tendency for head gasket in the M104 engine to leak oil from the back of the head. Sadly, this 1997 C36 up for sale in Canada, seems to suffer from both of these mentioned things. Although if you do the math on the purchase price plus potential repair costs, maybe you could come out ahead and have yourself a really cool car that the value is slowly rising on.
