Mercedes-Benz A160 W168 Classic Auto and Manual auto-clutch.

As one of our main reasons for selling the Lexus RX330 (*sob*) was the fuel economy it seemed right that our next car was the teeny tiny oh so clever Mercedes Benz A160 (1998 model). 

This car is famous for falling on it's head during a press test drive in it's early days. Luckily Mercedes recovered from that, redesigned the car for safer handling and re-released it. That's what we bought. 

We bought an A160 as it was a) economical with fuel and b) insanely safe. These little cars perform very well in crashes and can take on a bigger car in a chicken race with impunity (disclaimer-I do NOT endorse driving headlong into oncoming traffic or other objects in an A160 or any other car!). There was a serious amount of German (over) engineering in the development of these cars including tucking a large portion of the engine under the floor which means you get more cabin space than you would think possible (the car must have a bit of TARDIS DNA methinks) and a nice high driving position which we Mother types love-the visibility is great and the car ends abruptly at the rear screen meaning reversing is easy. Cabin size is reasonable and the roof is high, not that I care as I barely hit 5'4" in the morning (you are taller in the morning you know!) but those who are more regularly sized tell me the internal roof height is fine. The interior is boring and dark grey-some cars have some colourful sort of speckles or grey blotches on the trim in a sort of German attempt to make the interior "fun and cheerful" which, well, fails miserably.

If reconfiguring your car is your thing you can move all the seats in and out so it is a sort of small van and you can carry whitegoods about if you choose.  Boot space is OK but if you have a monster pram it doesn't really work (having said that I think I was expecting too much from such a small car).The ride feel is rather ordinary, very 'neutral' and I wouldn't rave about how it corners, it feels like a tall skinny car on small wheels.. probably because that is what it is.The power of 75kw@5250rpm is predictably adequate but not really zippy.

Fuel economy is good 7.2l/100km for the Manual (with auto clutch) and  7.6L/100km for the full auto.

The A160 didn't seem to come in a manual for Australians, just a Manual with auto clutch or the dubiously named "Fun Shift". we had a "Fun Shift" in a lovely Girly Magenta colour but we set out to find an auto soon after we bought the car as we just didn't enjoy it... I may remember driving in the wet to the panel beaters one day around many roundabouts, hopping out rather wound up and yelling at the car "Whose idea of  f******g fun is that you German t**ts?" (I am working on the swearing but to be honest the children are making me worse than I ever was BC- Before Children). My irrational shouty behaviour was bought on by what I view as the flaw with the Mercedes-Benz idea, you need to take your foot off the accelerator to change gears but like all the Benzes I have driven once you do that the car goes immediately "off the boil" and slows dramatically resulting in a far from smooth transition which was frustrating to me as a novice driver and must have driven drivers around me mad! A proper manual car doesn't suffer from this problem.It seems to me that whether you are an auto or manual driver you will need to abandon everything you thought you knew, successful driving of the *ahem* "Fun shift" means a totally new technique and approach...

 So we bought an auto which was in a metallic burgundy sort of red (not as nice as the Magenta IMHO). Unfortunately the change of transmission and colour also bought a plague of problems such as the car unexpectedly dropping in to 'F' gear which is a sort of limp home mode for when the gearbox fails... I can only guess what F stands for! The airconditioner also packed it in so she was sent off to the airconditioner repair shop where she came back exactly the same  (for free)  so was sent to the local dealership where she stayed for 5 days and was sent home exactly the same but with an AU$800 bill which we beat them down to AU$400 on the basis that they hadn't fixed anything and had no idea what was actually wrong with any of the malfunctioning systems. There was some talk of replacing the auto transmission piece by piece or the whole unit for a price of upwards of AU$5000.

Unfortunately the Mercedes Benz Folk seem to have out-smarted themselves and in making their smallest offering so very very clever they have opened it up to an extraordinary array of bizarre and expensive problems. Some of these have apparently been fixed in later models but the curse of the Mercedes Benz seems to be to fix a problem by creating a totally new concept for the flawed system which is promptly plagued by a totally new set of problems.

Second hand Benzes are temptingly cheap but this is for a very good reason, not even buying a very low mileage example protects you from the fine selection of problems you could find popping up at any time.

Having said that they do have good fuel economy and are safe...

Overall:Roomy and safe for a small car but it could go breathtakingly wrong at any moment for a variety of reasons. Boring and a bit frustrating to drive (auto clutch)

Rating:6/10

Value:7/10:They are temptingly cheap now but God help you if you need to do repairs.

Fuel economy:9/10 Very good, but what you save in fuel you will probably spend much more in strange repairs.

Style: 7/10:Weird and functional-kind of appeals to me but not to everyone's tastes. The Classic is very ordinary inside.