Mercedes seems a bit lost at the moment, doesn’t it? Once a paragon of taste, builder of vehicles you were happy to pay vastly more than their competitors for on the basis you knew it’d still be going strong several decades later, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing similar with the brand’s current range.
Take the Hyperscreen for instance, Merc’s dashboard-spanning touchscreen available in cars like the current S-Class and electric EQS. Not only is it a bit (well, a lot) gaudy, but there was a news story bouncing around the other week about a chap in the US who’d been presented with a $21k (around £16k) repair bill to replace a cracked screen in his S580. We try not to get too hung up on the idea that every touchscreen is a disaster waiting to happen for used buyers 20 years down the line, but will a used W223 S-Class have the same enduring appeal as an old W116 from the 1970s or the mighty W140 of the 1990s?
If you want the smallest hint of the potential complexity of running a modern Mercedes a few decades down the line, then you can do worse than look a few decades into the past. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the company was going through an awkward phase. The cars were still great – better in some ways than their predecessors, but time has shown their bodies to rust all too easily and their complex electronics to be susceptible to gremlins.
The good news for someone looking at, say, the stunning C215 Mercedes-Benz CL launched in 1998, is that provided you keep aside some cash for the more expensive jobs, problems with these cars certainly aren’t insurmountable.
You might not want to spend big money fixing a contemporary C-Class, but as one of Mercedes’ most prestigious models, and one sure to have some classic appeal in the not too distant future, the second-generation CL makes a pretty good case for itself, both as a vehicle and as a subject for sympathetic maintenance and restoration.
The CL nameplate had appeared in 1992 with the no-nonsense C140, cousin to the W140 S-Class. This big, brutal slab of steel was like an upsized C124 coupe, only less elegant with its unusually wide-eyed headlights, and came in at comfortably more than two tonnes even at its most basic (which wasn’t very basic, to be fair).
Much like the equivalent S-Class, the next CL would be lighter and more lithe, and there’d be no questioning its elegance either. While not everyone was sold on the new four-eyed face, and it still divides opinion today, the new C215’s lower, shorter, and narrower body was sleek and pretty where its predecessor had been bulky and brutalist. Model for model, Mercedes trimmed as much as 360kg from its kerbweight too, and the wheelbase was 80mm shorter than the S-Class for nimbler handling.
The pillarless profile remained, but the C215 also received one of the great rooflines, with a sweep and a taper to the rear pillar evocative of the W111 coupe of the 1960s. It blended perfectly into a long tail, with perhaps the most convincing application of Mercedes’ triangular rear light clusters. It looked imposingly long, but still measured in at under five metres, a figure that a lot of modern SUVs and estates are knocking on the door of with considerable extra bulk. Time has somehow made the CL seem both relatively small and relatively light.
Enthusiasts can argue that Merc’s efforts to cut weight resulted in an unavoidable drop in quality (most noticeable in the new, curvier cabin) and they might even be right, but it was unavoidably beneficial for the way the car went and handled. Even the entry-level CL 500, with its 302bhp V8, is a brisk performer with its 6.5-second 0-62mph time, but step up to the V12s and AMGs and you’d still take some modern cars by surprise.
All got Active Body Control active suspension, and that wasn’t the only tech on offer: Xenon low and high beams were standard, as was radar cruise control, and V12s could deactivate half their cylinders at a cruise to save fuel. The CL was among the first cars in the world to offer each of those features, let alone all of them together.
Dealing with all that today? That’s where the problems start, as quarter-century-old wiring and the potential in all that time for dubious maintenance means that you can quickly spend multiples of the car’s value on various fixes. The good news is there are workarounds.
Fixing the ABC suspension isn’t cheap for instance, but cheaper parts shipped from the other side of the world have made the job less wallet-draining than it used to be, and if you can live without the active element and a slightly tougher ride, plenty of reputable companies make a straightforward coilover suspension replacement too. Likewise, folks on forums have long since diagnosed most electrical issues, so a dashboard full of lights needn’t be cause for panic.
Buy well and you have a car that’s every bit as refined as modern equivalents, more involving to drive, and frankly a lot better looking than anything Mercedes makes today. There’s fuel and tax to consider of course but that’s sometimes the penalty with a modern classic. A good CL is certainly that already, and a future classic in the making too.
Would you take a C215 CL over a modern Mercedes? We’d love to know in the comments below.
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