Episode 227. Mercedes 500SEC. F335 MRT. (Part 1).

 Like pretty much every month so far this months car has not exactly gone according to plan, this is really not what I had in mind for car number 9, the September car.

Nope, that shouldn't be it. It's the right marque, but the wrong age and model, and here's my excuse for letting myself, and you guys down badly...

PROCRASTINATION
prə(ʊ)ˌkrastɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n
noun
the act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention.

I procrastinate far too much, I don't know why I do it, because it never does me any good. But generally I go from procrastinating straight to knee jerk reactions. This, as a rule is not good, but it's often how my car choices are made. The process is very simple, I see a car I want, I procrastinate until I've missed out on it, I then have a knee jerk reaction and buy something else. Sometimes this method works well for me, and sometimes it doesn't. 

This month I really should be telling you about this car:-

A lovely 1998 Mercedes CL500. I saw this listed on ebay and looked at it, and looked at it, and looked at it some more! I thought about it quite a lot, and finally I thought to myself, I'm gonna send that fella a message when I get home and see if I can buy it. So, as soon as I got home from work I checked my 'watch list' on fleabay, and pretty soon found myself thinking where is it? AAaaaaarrgh!! Some motherfunker has bought it... and I only procrastinated for a few days... What the heck? Who has done this to me, WHO?!!!

Never mind... I sat there for a few moments, and waited for the knee jerk reaction that would surely come to kick in. Before too long it came, and I hastily typed 'Mercedes' into the search field of fleabay. Clicking auction only, before clicking nearest first, I was thinking to myself anything would do, as long as it's MOT'd, running and driving, only has two doors, is close by, and most importantly is cheap, or atleast, cheap enough for me to be able to afford it!

CARPE DIEM
kɑːpeɪ ˈdiːɛm,ˈdʌɪɛm
exclamation
To "seize the day" and/or a certain moment in time.
To put aside all differences, all fears, all worries, and just go for it.
To make the most out of that part of time.

With the sale of the gorgeous CL500, the time for procrastination was over... It was time to sieze the day, and purchase the car that my knee jerk reaction had made me buy! Time for car number 9, the September car, a 1988 Mercedes 500SEC V8, with a 5.0 litre petrol engine, and just 182025 miles showing on the odometer. Now for me I've always quite fancied the SEC, and when I was a kid I had this matchbox model:-

I remember thinking, ohh yeah, thats bad ass... Or atleast I probably would've if Richard Rawlings had been invented to influence my termenology back then! But I remember sitting on a sofa back in the late eighties with my girlfriend watching Roadhouse, she was all, "oh Patrick Swayze, I love him so much." Goodness knows why she was with me if she loved Patric Swayze so much, I looked nothing like him, I looked more like John Candy, but whatever! Anyway, personally I thought that Roadhouse was a pretty dull film, but then the Merc 560 shows up, and I was suddenly a little bit more interested! I must admit, I did shed a tear at the end of that film, and to this day it still makes me cry, I can't believe they did that to that beautiful car!

But after watching Roadhouse I was determined to get myself a Mercedes SEC someday. Then about fifteen years ago I was starving myself trying to save up enough money to buy one because I'd found one, a good one, and despite being weak from starvation, I'd managed to save enough of my pennies for it. It was this one:-

The problem was that it was resplendent in Spandau Ballet GOLD, and despite it being perfect in almost every way, that colour put me off. So guess what, yep, I procrastinated! After driving for over two hours just to go and look at the car I found myself telling the seller that I would have to think about it. 

The trouble was, when I got home, I found that my copy of HOTROD had landed on my door mat with the concept for the new (2005) Mustang on the cover. I stared at that cover while I ate my tea, man alive I thought that was a cool car. I needed to have one of those! I phoned the Mercedes seller back and told him I wouldn't be having it, as I needed to starve a little bit more for something else. 

The thing is though, that Gold Mercedes never left my mind, it was pretty much perfect, it was the best I could find, and I'd missed it! Almost! Because ten years later, and with my 2005 Mustang parked safely outside BelongaClint I found it again, and this time jumped on it without any procrastination! Better yet, it was still immaculate, it looked just as good as it looked the day I saw it ten years earlier!  I bought it, and brought it home with me. But I didn't have it long enough. Just four months after buying it someone offered me far too much money for it, and so I let it go... DAMMIT!!

So then, time for a re-visit!

 

 Now then, I'm not one for naming my cars, but this is Mr T! First impressions? Well, I'm going to start with the actual purchase of this little beauty, because frankly after winning the auction every fibre of my body was saying don't go and collect this car! I won the car for just £2000.01, and as there were other 500SEC's on ebay which were projects and were selling for more, I figured that the seller wasn't going to let it go for so little. However, more out of curiosity than anything I emailed him and asked him when I could collect it. I then waited to hear what excuses that he was going to come up with to stop me comming to get the Mercedes. I heard nothing back for a couple of days, then I got an email saying to pay up and collect the car. I said do you really want me to pay you with with Paypal? He said yes, so I asked him again if he was sure, and once again he said yes. So that's what I did, I paid him with Paypal. Personally I hate doing that because the seller loses out by Paypal charging them about 10% for the privelidge!

 

But with the Mercedes all paid for I checked the tax and MOT status of the car. Foolish! I really should've done that before paying up!  Damn knee jerk reactions! It said that the MOT had expired in May. A quick check at the ebay ad, and what does it say? 12 months MOT! So I emailled the seller, and asked him what is going on? He says that he was going to put an MOT on it if, and only if it got to £3500! I was apocalyptically furious, and I said that I wouldn't be coming for it as it was advertised with 12 months MOT, and that is exactly what I was expecting! He then told me that he would put it in for a MOT the following day, and true to his word, he did, better still, it passed! Of course, because he'd lied about he MOT status I wondered what else was wrong with it that he had ommitted from the advert on fleabay. I waited until the MOT showed up on the DVLA website, then I arranged to collect the car one evening from central London. 

 

When I arrived to collect it, I was ten minutes late due to an accident on the M3, but the Mercedes was parked outside on the street. I knocked the fellas door... No answer, I knocked several more times... Still no answer. I thought, oh dear, that's not good (or something along those lines!) Then I thought I'd ring him, I took my very basic the old mobile phone out of my pocket, and, oh, I've got a text. It read, "keys and documents are in the glovebox m8, help yourself"... Ok then. well, I don't like this idea already, but I got in, and said to my Brother, right then, we're off, don't leave me because I reckon the police are going to stop me in my stolen car any minute now! He just looked at me, laughed, then said GOODBYE... And disappeared off into the night leaving me in a cloud of tyre smoke! Great! However, because his work car was low on fuel, I caught him up less than a mile later, at the petrol station, and, as the big 5.0 litre V8 in my Mercedes was running on vapours I figured I'd better put a good splash of petrol in mine too, and so without further ado, here's the first fill shot:-

 

So, whats it like? Well, it's safe to say that it's nowhere near as nice as my first one, but to be fair that one was  almost like a new car, it had been cherished, whereas this one in comparisson is a little bit scruffy, but it's solid, and it drives really nicely. It wafts along the road effortlessly right up until you stamp on the loud pedal, and then you are off down the road at a very brisk pace! The seats are big, leathery, and comfy, and everything works at the touch of a button! Driving back from London I remembered a conversation I had with my then 7 year old when I had just bought the gold one. She was sitting in the back and asking me about it, and what was it like, and what engine it had, and so on. At the time I had just sold my 1990 Camaro. So I told her that it was a bit like the Camaro, it had a 5.0 litre V8 engine up front, an automatic transmission in the middle, and it was rear wheel drive. She said, cool, on the next roundabout, get the back out! To which I replied, no, no, no, it's not a hooligan car, it's a wafting car. Which was met with, c'mon Dad, do it, do it! I said again, that the answer is still no, it's just not that kind of car, it's for wafting about, not hooliganism. This was met with my then 7 year old year old Monster looking at the then 3 year old Monster and saying to her, Dad doesn't know how to drive the Mercedes, he can't handle this car, probably too big! Oh reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally I replied... Hang on to something!! Hey, what do ya know... It can be used for hooliganism!