[V8] gone completely to the dark side

[Roger & Michelle C Woodbury]

Well, I've written before about not having an Quattro let alone a V8 in the yard. That time was because I had bought a GMC 4X4 pickup as the only transportation.  It's worked pretty well except for that time the transmission grenaded and we learned quickly that living where we live, we must have two vehicles.  The truck was tied up for more than a week and there were NO rental cars available that we could get to.So now we have bought an additional car and it's not a Quattro.  Oh, I tried to find one but at anything near what I wanted to spend, nothing was available with less than 70,000 miles and an incomplete or mostly mission service history. Nope!  not doing that.But after about six months of search I found what I think will turn out to be perfect.  But it's sort of from the dark side...I have bought a 2004 Mercedes Benz CLK 320.  This is a nice small car and the thing that attracted me to it the most was that it was a two owner car but both owners from the same family: mother and daughter.  Mother bought the car in 2004 and in five years put 623 miles on it. Then daughter took the car to seminary in Alabama where she put the rest of the miles on it.  Oh, and the car had 17432 miles on it when it was unloaded in my driveway.  Best of all, the car was serviced to death by authorized Mercedes dealers and all service records are now in my hands.  The car is as new.Now it will be a bit problematic in the winter as the car is rear wheel drive (I know, I know....), and the car will need a set of winter wheels since the CLK has different size front and rear wheels and tires and in winter I will need the same wheels for front and rear anyway. But when the going is Maine-bad, the truck will be the vehicle that gets the call anyway.The CLK is very nice...sort of intimate like my Porsche 928 was, and with power actually better (I think) than my 1990 V8 quattro.  I can't tell that it's a six instead of V8 ahead of the firewall. I expect flames but this is perhaps the lowest mile Gen 2 CLK in the country and the price was very right.  I bought it on line from a dealer in Maryland, sight unseen, on the basis of the photographs, especially the photo the dealer showed of the underside.Roger