It has clearly had an easy life, no signs of hard driving having been undertaken. Coming rapidly to the elephant in the room then, is it just a hairdresser’s car? Well in my own personal case I think that it literally was in the past. So, fire up the engine, and off we go – it’s such an easy car to drive in auto form, snick it into D and point it where you want to go, that’s all there is to it. The result of this is that the car is two-tone, some of it bright red where the lacquer is preserving the paint, but other panels are going pinky. Several panels on the car have no lacquer at all, others still have but it’s starting to flake off. On my car though, there is a bigger problem, which apparently is the blight of many a red car (why red?) from that era. Fortunately the fronts are fairly easily replaceable. The front wings are a major rust area, you’ll be lucky to find a car from this era with perfect front, or for that matter rear, wings. Actually, it’s not that bad on my car, I’ve seen worse, but again, for a quality brand it is surprising MB did such a poor job of rustproofing. Oh, but first, before we drive off… the other problem with the car. But hey, the wind is now in your hair, who cares about luggage? There is an ‘issue’ with boot space - the roof takes up half the already modest volume and in addition leaves you with a very small gap through which to unload your stuff. A superb piece of design, now much copied.
2000 slk kompressor leg room windows#
The windows go down, the boot lid magically hinges at the back end of the car and the roof folds itself up and disappears behind you, all in about half a minute. No doubt they were simply distracted by the brilliance of the electric roof, which is actuated by a centre console switch. The interior trim does not feel like it comes from a quality brand car - I think MB were lucky that people forgave the car this when new. The door cards were both just falling off the door until I glued them back in place recently. The interior trim is not particularly worn, but it is quite flimsy. The trim inside is a little worn, but the leather is good and everything electrical, like cruise control, electric mirrors, sound system and alarm all function with no problems. The engine and gearbox run like new, and the roof works perfectly. My car is 19 years old, and has done just 53,000 miles. A huge number of them were made in silver, though other colours were available, a stunning yellow, black, white, green, blue and for the example we’re going to look at here, Imperial Red. The most common configuration for those early SLK was the R170 SLK230 Kompressor, with a 2.3 litre straight four engine fitted with a compressor – and mostly with an automatic gearbox. A lot of these changes have detracted somewhat from the original design in my opinion, so I’m very happy to be reviewing an original car, before it was messed about with and turned into something else - nice though the something else is I’m sure. The very first SLKs are now over 20 years old and I would argue they are therefore just about ready for Classic Car status – though I have no idea who actually decides these things – an autonomous collective? The car has gone through some changes over the years, notably recently becoming an SLC – which seems a bit of daft move by Mercedes but there you go. The car was an instant success, and was named the SLK, translated this stands for Sporty, Light and Short (Sportlich, Leicht und Kurz). Incorporated in the design was a ‘killer’ feature - not a totally new idea, but new to the mass market and beautifully implemented - the ‘Vario’ hydraulic roof. In the mid-1990s Mercedes Benz came up with a relatively cheap, relatively cheerful, concept for a new sports car. Lots of fun for not much cash - and surely soon to be a classic
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