S-Class is still alive and very much kicking
Former £500 Challenge Merc is better than ever
1996 MERCEDESBENZ S280
Remember when CCW ran its £500 Challenge back in 2016 – and how former news ed, Murray Scullion, bought this Mercedes-Benz S280? About the size of a house, the best-engineered car ever to come out of Stuttgart proved to be a little troublesome, but ultimately worth every penny of what we spent on it.
Being a serial car hoarder, I’d had designs on this car ever since it joined the CCW fleet, so when Editor Simister graciously agreed to sell it to me after the project ended, last summer, I snapped it up, without really having an idea what to do with it. The good news is that the CCW team had done the car proud during its year-long challenge, having reshod it with good quality tyres, serviced it and fixed the troublesome automatic selector. And, yes, we’d proved that it is perfectly possible to run a classic Mercedes-Benz for £500.
For once, it seemed that I had bought well. The car itself is so straight, clean and tidy and the interior so unmarked – aside from air conditioning that doesn’t blow cold – that it might as well be a threeyear-old car.
The big question, of course, is whether these cars still work once the glare of the magazine publicity is off them. And you know what? The Merc has been an absolute peach.
I’ve run it on and off through the rough winter, and not once has it failed to proceed. The immobiliser issues that were often reported upon in CCW never returned, so I can only assume that it was operator error. Bad Murray.
David sold it to me with the proviso that the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. Interesting, this, because the ABS/ETC light went out after a couple of runs and came back to bug us only intermittently. A rifle through the service history solved the mystery – the car underwent a Mercedes-Benz main dealer health check back in 2016, and the report flagged up that the ABS pump was on its way out.
Two years on, and with the light now more on than not, we’ve ordered a £20 replacement pump off eBay, and intend to fit it for the MoT, which is rapidly approaching. The pump’s seller says that it’s tested and good – and this being a 1990s Mercedes-Benz, a) I believe him, and b) it’s not coded to the car or anything daft like that, so it should be a straight swap.
Any other failures during what was a very tough winter for the car? The offside indicator lens popped out. Again, a £20 replacement off eBay, and she’s as good as new.
I’ll take that.