I am thinkingof buying own myself but I am going for a 200 unsupercharged year around 2000 much more economical to run I believe in the UK there was/is a road tax break from fixed to variable in march 2000 .The diffs leak,rust is a major problem those with full mercedes service records tend to have been properly resprayed under warranty and do not seem to rust again other than that they are super cars having run one before one or two problems in the HJ car reviews but I have never seen any of them and they never appear on the MB forums.Look for overspray a sign of a quick blow over to cover the rust manuals should be a cheaper than automatics but as far as maintanance is concerned a manual is much more practicable not having the expensive gearbox oil cooler plenty of places to buy cheapish spare parts and to me look beautiful.

Rust.

Check very carefully everywhere but especially along the front of bonnet and wings, all wheelarches, bootlid especially around lock, doors peel back rubbers and check.

It may well be in the year for Valeo radiator problem, check to see if rad has been replaced, if it's an original Valeo (you'll have to check one of the MB forums for likely years etc) then budget for replacement rad, the coolant and transmission cooler parts can interleak sending coolant round the gearbox, a bad thing. If the rad looks brand new ask yourself if this might have recently happened.

A manual by the way is not desirable in an MB and is generally unwanted, performing hill starts with the foot operated parking brake is not the easiest, and besides MB 4/5 speed auto boxes are superb.

MAF Sensor can go astray and look for water damage in the passenger footwell as there's a matrix that can fail just under the dash.

Both easy fixes, about £100 max.

200 & 230 engines can sound a bit rough, for the real deal get a 320 post 2000 with the tiptronic box. You'll still get 35mpg +

Thank You all for your informative replies. Sadly, when I went to see it, it had been sold!

However, it was still there for me to look at and it was as much as I could do to stop dribbling. What a lovely car.

So I've at least decided on what car I'm having next.

I didn't think it was appropriate for me to go over it with a critical eye but at least I'm now armed with some info as to its common failures and weaknesses.

Many thanks again to you all

Driller