Our A-Class Story

Have you ever had something that you really like, even cherish?

We have, our Mercedes A-classes. We ve had three of them now and we love them to bits.

We’ll start with our first A-class, an A160 Avantgarde, in Athol Blue, which we bought in 2000.

We d initially wanted to purchase the new VW Beetle as we where smitten with it after taking a test drive, however we wanted an Automatic and this pushed the price of the beetle up to around £18,000.

Thanks to Mike (mykp) for writing this article, as you will see he's owned several A Classes....

At the time this was way beyond our budget.

In the mean time our old VW Golf was busy dying, it was an G reg Golf Driver Auto with all these stupid emission control systems which had really screwed up, it either ran okay or idled at 2000rpm with a viscious gear change.

At round about the time as the Golf was dying our local Mercedes garage where holding a sale so we decided to take a look at the A-class as they had several on offer at the time.

We entered the garage to see a brand new A160 Avantgarde, Auto with all the bells and whistles, the only thing it didn’t have was Air Conditioning. We took it for a test drive, loved it and bought it there and then!

We decided on the A-class over the Beetle on 3 things,

Mercedes Benz over Volkswagen (Bit of a no brainer that one),
Practicality (The A-class is a more practical vehicle that the beetle, which looks nice)
Space (The glove box on the A-class is more spacey than the Beetles boot)

To be brutally honest the A-class is basically a 5 door van with seats and windows. Don’t get me wrong I like its van like interior which brings us on to space. The A-class is massive inside compared with the VW Beetle which is both handy for my own and my wife’s business as we both need to move large items from time to time.

My wife shifts large pottery items, materials and equipment and I move large amounts of computer equipment.

All the seats come out of the A-class, and the Long Wheel Base version has either loads of legroom or you can move the seats forward for loads of boot space. Not as much as some MPV’s on the market admitidly but they don’t come with a Mercedes Benz badge on the front

I’ve even had two cement mixers in our first A-Class with all but the driver’s seat removed. Quite funny when I turned up at HSS with both cement mixers in the car. The staff at the store didn’t believe me until they saw it. (On later models the removal of the front seats has become an optional extra as the front seats are now bolted in)

We had the A160 for just over a year and did 7500 miles in it driving as far away as Cornwall to John O’Groats. In all the time we owned the car we didn’t have a single problem and all the garbage people told us about the car tipping over when forced to swerve hard was dismissed late one night driving down the M7 at 90mph, when a fox ran out in front of us and I had to swerve to miss it.

We ended up facing the wrong way on the motorway however we didn’t tip over and we didn’t hit the fox, but we did leave some groovy looking skid marks on the motorway! Glad it was at about 2am in the morning though!

After driving the A160 round for a year, we’d only had the sunroof open a few times and began to wish we d gone for Air Conditioning instead. So we swapped our A160 for a brand new A140 Avantgarde with AC. Same car, smaller engine, and different colour. Mangrove Green.

Now the A140 was a different beast to the A160 as the A140 was a Post face lift model and looked slightly different to the A160. It was also cosmetically different inside.

We did just less than 7000 miles in the A140 in two years, not because we didn’t want to drive it but because 2001/2002 was a busy period for me and the wife and we didn’t drive very far. My wife was in Japan for 5 months in these two years and if I was away, I was using my Crown as at the time my business was paying my insurance/petrol/etc.

However we did do some epic trips, driving to Southern Spain and back and Cornwall Twice!

The A140 did cause us two problems though, one major, one minor but extremely irritating. Lets stick with the minor problem first. When we where away in Japan the car sat idle in the Garage for 4 weeks and on our return the car only just started, however it did start. But the engine management warning light came on as it started and stayed on.

After driving the car round for about 50 miles, the battery was charged enough to start the car no problem but the engine management light was still on even though the official user handbook says the light should go out within 20-30 miles.

So, off down to the local MB dealer, who informs me that it will cost £43 to reset the computer. What! Okay I part with £43 to get it reset but the dealer informs me that this was because of the flat battery. How can I avoid paying £43 every time I go to Japan for 4 weeks?

I have since found out that you can reset the engine management system, but any errors are still logged in the engine management computer and it can invalidate your warranty if anything major goes wrong at a later date because of this error. Anyway I complained to MB head office several time and got a voucher for £100! So not to bad after all.

Next onto what I class a major problem. Mercedes Assyst.

What a pain in the arse this was as it kept telling us the car needed a service first at 3500 miles and then after the dealer reset it again at 4200 miles, then again after it was reset at 4800 miles. After throwing my toys out of the pram in the dealers they replaced the instrument panel but the assist went off again at 5200 miles so I had the car serviced. Didn’t stop assist kicking in again just 600 miles later, the dealer replaced the instrument panel again and this sorted it out. However we did trade the car in soon afterwards so I don’t know if this problem continued or not. (I see the car quite regularly as its now owned by elderly couple - if you own Y131 SBN or my old Athol Blue W637 JHE please send me an email)