You can never escape ur thirst for quirky euro cars, doug

German here, The A-class was sort of a granny-car. It was really popular with older folk that came from nicer Mercedes' and needed a practical car to do shopping and get all your grandkids in the back. Parking in tight spaces with this is a blast with its great visibility.

An important point to add: Like you said, they added stability control (ESP) to every A-Class during the recall. But during that time in 1997, stability control had only been available in the S-Class. Similar for other manufacturers, it was only offered in the top of the line models. By adding it to their base model as a standard option, Mercedes had to start offering it to their other models (ML, C-Class etc.). And other manufacturers had to quickly adapt and offer the same to their customers. So, while everyone has been laughing at the failed elk test, one could argue that it saved a lot of lives afterwards by pushing stability control at a much faster pace across the entire car market than it would have otherwise!

What I love about Doug is that he can get really enthused about a small, under-powered car like this, because it's fun and quirky. A true car enthusiast. I respect him for that.

I like how he says "to import it you gotta be weird and rich, i got those covered" while maniacally laughing behind the steering wheel of the short mercedes

You need to take this to a Mercedes dealership and ask them for a routine service and see how their mechanics react.

Most people don't know that the A-Class was engineered at first to be an EV. Hence the sandwich floor where the battery was supposed to go. When the EV plans were canned (because the time was not right yet), the double floor was communicated as a safety feature for side impact protection. The angled position of the transverse engine was also an afterthought. The more compact E-motor would have fit into the small space easily.

It's a perfectly reasonable choice for a lot of people in Europe. A small car that you can easily park in a tight spot, a practical car for families, to go shopping and so on. The fact that it was successful despite its weirdness shows that it's useful. Practical, compact economical. The french build a lot of cars like those A-Class.

I owned a total of 3 of these and I have to add some information to the Video. 1st of all: THE ELK TEST: As Doug mentioned after this test Mercedes fitted ESP (electronic stability program) to EVERY unit of these cars (even to those which were allready sold) and from this moment on they were within the top 5 of the safest subcompact cars of the time. Mercedes even made advertisements with the Elk-Test then and when I picked up my 1st new A-Class in November 2001 I bought a little stuffed animal Elk in the Mercedes-Benz Store (this guy is still sitting in my living room). 2nd: THE PRACTICALLITY: Doug missed to show you one of the most important features of this car: It's tremendous practicallity. The rear seats can be folded which increases the trunk space like in a normal car (but with a huge step from the trunk floor to the folded seat backs). BUT they can also be removed completely, which gives you a HUGE level floor and a trunk space almost like in a serious van. And if that wouldn't be enough you also could opt for an also removable and foldable front passenger seat (the seat right of the driver), which increases the level floor and the space even more. I NEVER owned a vehicle more practical than the 1st gen A-Class, even if I also owned several station wagons. 3rd: THE OPTIONS: Dougs exemplar is really basic almost without any options beside the A/C (btw from 2000 almost every sold A-Class was sold with an A/C - that no one opted for the A/C is only true for the very first model years. But there are a ton of (pricy) options you could get to increase luxury and experience. You could opt for the Elegance-line which is a more luxurious line and even a leather interior was available when you opted for this line. You could also opt for the Avantgarde-line which was a more sporty line and in this case a part-leather interior was standard. Also seat pockets on the back of the front seats were available as options as well as lots of other stuff which increased the usability and the practicallity of this car. From the drivers perspective you could also order things like automated speed control, a (very smooth an quick shifting) 5-gear automatic transmission, better engines (100hp, 123hp and from 2002 to 2004 also a 138hp "AMGish" engine as well as Diesel engines with 74hp and 94hp). It may be not the most beautiful car of the time (but also not the most ugly one...) but in my opinion the W168 never was a bad car, especially not for its time and especially not when you chose the options you wanted.

As a Brit this makes me laugh because these cars were everywhere and still are very common and so many are in the scrapyard right now. That’s why we like Doug, he gets all excited by the most mundane crap 😂

This car is amazing, I had the pleasure to own 2 A Classes here in Brazil, both were 2004, A160 Classic and A190 Avantgarde. The Avantgarde was beyond amazing with all the car’s features and the 1.9 engine is tremendously powerful for this tiny car, it easily reaches 200km. Have a nice time with your Baby Benz and I hope more people get to buy it in the USA!

21:10 "you need to be both weird and rich, and I got those bases covered" loolol

Could this be a return of Doug purchasing quirky cars and making silly videos with them like the early days of his channel???

I am from Europe and there are many of these on the road, but never have I seen someone being this excited about owning or driving one 😂

I get your fascination about this car, even though it's not exotic in Germany at all. But it's distinctive and classic, with a story behind it. My grandma passed away few months ago ... leaving this car with low mileage among other things. Guess I'm able to drive this car from time to time ... primarily thinking of meemaw, but secondarily at Doug, driving the same car. :D

Doug, you will learn to love this car so deeply. I learned to drive in 2010 in my Mum’s 2000 A160 elegance in that blue. With the elegance you could get the leather interior in a very similarly crazy blue. It is such a practical car with its flat floor. You can take all the seats except the driver’s out and use it as a van. Plus the high rear seats and low belt line mean kids can see out the back window which they always love. It’s a cracking car, wish they made an EV one now

The thing with automatic windows in front and manual in the back is actually very common on european cars to this day

Hi Doug, I Used to own one of these (I drive the successor, the w169) now. And there are several quirks you missed (or maybe they were never present in the first buildyears). The rear seats flip over to create a larger booth, AND they are very easily removable to make it bigger still. The headlights are used in several Colani Aerotrucks. There is a 2 engined version, made for a rallydriver. There was a derivative car called the Vaneo, which was a subcompact MPV, which didn't last long. But the absolute gem you forgot to mention is... it was designed to be electrified. The floors have space between them to have batteries in them. The W169 had a test-version which used then-current Tesla batteries.

You are such a wholesome and unique reviewer Doug, keep it up. I loved hearing about the weird body style import process/decisions you had to go through to find this gem. Just hope you don't see any elk! 😅

Steve Mattin actually got a “Design of the Year” industry award with this car, which got him into the “big league” of designers. He has a lot of stories about it and his later work at Volvo and LADA (where we’ve got acquainted). So Doug, if you ever doing an interview format - I can connect you two.

Fun fact: the patterned seats on the OG A-class are the same pattern as on many European Mercedes city buses at the time

I really loved my A140. Reliable cheap to run and the handling was awsome; not going to roll. My favourite thing was taking the seats out, creating a tiny van.

As an Euro this is fun to watch! I really like Doug's enthusiasm reviewing an everyplace run-of-the-mill car! FWIW, I'd like to see a review of Hyundai Getz, one of those bigger engine versions either the 1.6 l or the 1.5 l turbo-diesel. That's a seriously fun compact car to drive! btw. The manual rear windows is still a thing in Europe. Up to late 2010s almost all low- to mid-end car models had that. Heck, I drive one myself (a 2016 model Sandero)!

I think it would be hilarious to see how mechanics at a mercedes dealer would react to seeing this car roll in

This car was for many in Europe the first opportunity to own a Mercedes. It was extremely popular and it's still a common sight in European roads. The one shown in the video is in really good condition.

When you drive around in Germny, you still see these cars. I would say on the Autobahn you see one of those every 1-2 hours, which is quite a lot actually regarding their age. They are very popular cars for people who don't change cars every few years and they seem to be very reliable too.

We had two Merc A-Class's and we looovved them both. One was an A160 Elegance and the other was an A190 Avangard....both were incredibly reliable and super practical....I'd love another one as a second car for every day motoring ! All the talk about them rolling over was way over exaggerated....they were super safe when driven 'normally' and could be thrown around a bit with no worries whatsoever. We felt extremely safe in them and the interior was all gorgeous soft leather in both vehicles...a great comfortable little car and a tremendous work horse!

My dad an A160 of this exact year and color when we lived in Germany (which was ironic, because he was an American GM executive). This was the car I learned how to drive in after receiving my German Führerschein (drivers' license), and it was the ideal car for an 18-year-old high schooler. It had plenty of space for friends who wouldn't complain about the economy accommodations because they were high schoolers, it was easy to park in European cities, it had stability control and ABS, and it had enough but limited power. The fastest I could ever go was about 170 km/h on the Autobahn, and that was downhill with some help from the wind. This video brought back a lot of memories.

The ASR button is not for the system that stopped the A class from rolling over, it's just for the traction control. The system they had to install after the failed moose test is a electronic stability control (ESC or ESP in Germany), which obviously you couldn't switch off. As a guy from Germany who was 12 or 13 years old when the moose test happened I remember that nearly instantly a lot of jokes occurred on that incident even by TV comedians.

I had one of these for ten years, a 1997 A160, same trim level and colour than yours. I remember it as an extremely practical, well thought and economical machine. Small outside, but great capacity inside. And very cool, at least before it became too common in Europe. No driving thrills (but at the time, I had a BMW 535i for that 😉), even if I guess the 102 hp made it more drivable than yours. Very practical as 2nd car in the family. Only negative point was that (possibly due to the improvements in handling after the infamous elk-test), the suspension was really hard, which is ok for a Porsche but no so much for a eminently practical car.

A few more things about that car you should know. The rear seats fold down to give more room in the rear. You can also remove these seats, along with the passenger front seat for greater storage. One of my friends here in Australia has one of these, & he carries his artist stuff with him.

Some additional context for the moose test: Mercedes couldn't reproduce that, so they've invited the driver who achieved that, they found out then, that the tarmac compound on the swedish test track was significantly grippier than on Mercedes' test centres. They've also changed the tires from originally 175/65R15 to 195/50R15 with stiffer sidewalls and stiffened the suspension. Another funny thing is that they've parked many A-Classes waiting for the upgrades nearby a village called "Kippenheim" and "kippen" is the German word for "to tip (over)" or "to tilt", so exactly at the right place. I don't really like the A-Class (but Mercedes-Benz in general isn't my favorite), but it's a nice small MPV and although I would prefer other body styles at the moment, I would still prefer MPVs over most SUVs. It's a shame that most EVs at the moment are SUVs, almost no wagons or MPVs (and most MPVs like the VW Touran don't even have a hybrid drivetrain available. Because of their upright postion such cars as the A-Class (first two generations), B-Class, Golf Plus/Sportsvan and Opel Meriva are/were very popular among elderly people in Europe.

I'm surprised you didn't bring up the A38 AMG that had two 1.9L engines in the front and back, powering both sets of wheels. Had an output of 250hp and did 0-100kmph in 5.9 seconds. Pretty rare car. Only 49 were imported here to Australia.

Thanks for buying this Doug it's like taking one for the team but you get a cool car that no one in America ever heard of

Yes, when Mercedes put this car on the market, it suffered from rollover in moose trials to avoid an obstacle. It was the first little car to have ESP because with it, the car didn't rollover anymore. The first two seater Smart car, even this coming out from Mercedes, suffert the same rollover but they solved increasing the rear tracks and putting larger wheels at the rear.

I had one when I had a serious accident. To this day I know that thanks to its design, it saved my life. It was written off by the insurance company and I only broke a finger. The engine did indeed dive under me and the ASR/ABS setup worked perfectly. I immediately bought another one. I was doing quite a lot of mileage with a fifty fifty mix of town and main road travelling and mine were A170 CDI’s with automatic transmission and Tempomat. In the end I bought something else just for a change 😀

80 hp was more than enough in Europe in the late 90's. In fact little cars like this with 80-90hp was like a racecar for some of the owners, you know. We still have cars with 40-60 hp in most of the countries in Europe and those are the basic ones. Anyway, congrats Doug and have fun! I didn't expect you to buy one of these, it suits you really well.

Did my license test in one of those here in Germany, it's a great car for beginners. Super easy to parallel park, you have a great overview over the size of it from the inside. It might not be a beauty, but it's a great car to learn driving in.

Honestly, from my European perspective, 80hp is adequate. My dad's car has 60, and while that struggles on steep hills, we've pulled a trailer with a heavy motorcycle on it from Germany all the way to Croatia and back without issue.

This is the most unexpected purchase I've ever encountered from Doug. Totally unexpected.

These were popular in Australia as a poor mans Merc but were quite handy as a city car. The sort of folks looking at them were not after performance and handling but a compact economical car with a badge and it worked.

This A Klasse Mercedes Benz is JEWEL of the automotive design. I have an A190 code W168 Elegance with leather seats , CD charger , AC , Automatic with only 40,000 miles and I love it. Lucky you to have it , congratulations.

An ex girlfriend of mine had the A160 Brabus, which was an excellent little thing. The A class is a very well considered design of car with the flat floor and large cabin. The only real problem it had was the coil packs constantly failing.

As an european i find this ridiculous

The funny thing is that instead of hip young people, this car quickly became a favorite with old people, to the extent that, driving in Germany, you would automatically assume upon seeing one of these that it was driven by an elderly person. What Doug did not mention is how incredibly reliable they were. I wouldn't know any other make and model older than 15 years of which you can still see so many on the streets in Germany. The other thing is that for a compact car it is incredibly roomy. We recently inherited one (2nd generation, 2007 model) as a driver for our kids and I don't know any other car that size where I (6' 5") can ride in the back fairly comfortably or even sit upright.

I've still got my late 90s A-Class today! Though mine was bought at a newsstand and is a toy car, but that just tells you how incredibly common these were in Central Europe! You can still see a few of the original ones driving around, which is what makes this video all the more interesting. Sometimes the cultural differences in automotive culture between the US and Europe are massive. This car was seen as normal.

Great review. I've owned an A160 for a year now and I love it. It's slow, silly but it's just a great car. I travel a lot for work. It gives me 66 mpg. Great position for my bad back. Easy to park. It dies have a few quirky issues though. Dash lights have gone off. Central locking went a while ago too. All adds to the fun! £30 per year tax and passes the ulez laws here in the UK. Long live quirky cars!

Doug is the kind of guy to describe himself as both weird, AND RICH! 🤣♥️

AMG also did a totally weird A38 AMG version of this A-Class and it had 2 engines from the A190. The second 1 was mounted underneath the cargo area so it actually had all wheel drive and 250hp. Unfortunately only 4 cars were produced I think😂

My favourite Benz. Apparently, I share the same love for quirky cars as Doug. So much so that I’ve resigned myself to spending as much of my life in Europe as possible so that I might own or at least drive my favourite, quirky, European cars such as most any French car or Fiat Multipla. Congratulations, Doug.

Had it in the city and it's awesome to park and easy to drive as side windows are huge (going down well below the front console, as seen in the video). The suspension is stiff and also somewhat fragile, so it's best driven on smoothly paved roads. ASR anti-slip feature worked wonders and got the car unstuck many times in snow (and couple of times from a dirt trench), much better than on a Volvo i had next, who would have guessed. When it was 15 years old it had multiple problems with auxiliary belt and the alternator, fuel leaks somewhere inside that sandwich floor and rear suspension was not particularly heavy duty, but I was always able to drive it to the mechanic on its four wheels.

80hp for a compact car was quite big actually. And I'm not even talking about the 100hp engine, that was a lot for this category. A Renault Twingo most often had a 60hp engine, a VW Lupo started at 50hp, and a Peugeot 106 had between 45 and 60hp in most versions. 80hp as a base engine, that's quite a robust engine.

In Germany they also released a “A 210 evolution” version with a 140hp engine, which was actually quite beefy for its compact size. It also included a lot of AMG components such as a cool exhaust. It was not allowed to carry the AMG batch for some reason and was therefore renamed “evolution”.

I used to work at car rentals in the late 2000s. we had 2nd generation A and B classes. they were pretty decent cars. even in terms of power with the 2 litre diesel engines. good amount of torque and very stable on the autobahn.

Probably the most comfortable small car I've ever driven, great design and engineering, drove it 1500 km on one weekend, felt like a Mercedes. This is not a ridiculous car.

I don’t think Doug is a quirky car guy, I think he’s a car guy in the most wholistic way. He like SUVs, EVs, driver’s cars, weird cars, and others. Doug is the kind of guy who owns 2 of the greatest super cars, but would excited to talk to you about your $30,000 weird car.

21:00 "You need to be both weird and rich. I've got those bases covered!" You've got to love Doug!

Doug, most Mercedes models in 1998 when this came out did not have steering wheel controls. Here in Australia, ALL A-Classes came with air conditioning as standard. Also, we only got the A160 initially. The A140 wasn't added to the range until 2000. There was also no manual transmission here - we only got the semi-automatic and fully automatic transmission options.

To be fair, the C-class of this time (W202) was also sold in Germany with a TON of blank switchgear and crank windows in the back as standard. Powered windows were an option and from the ones I've been in not a popular one either. So it is not like the A-class really stuck out of the rest of the Mercedes lineup in those regards.

The Renault Clio still has 65 hp for the most basic version today… So 85 hp was actually quite good. Minivans in Europe in 2010 were mostly having 90 to 110-130 hp, especially in Diesel.

My parents took a trip to England in the early 2000s, and got one of these as their rental car. When they got home they were bragging to everyone about how they rented a Mercedes over there, apparently unaware that these were just ordinary cheap compact cars. They also kept calling it a "Mercedes Elegance". As best as I can tell, "Elegance" was actually the trim level, but they must have seen that badge and mistaken it for the model name.

I had a 2010 A-180 when I was living in Japan and I loved that car. It was perfect for all the tiny, narrow roads that you find all over Japan. Had I been able to afford to store it for 15-years before shipping it over here.

My father had one of those, green, just like the one that was shown rolling over. It was funny to learn that these were not sold in the US, here in Brazil they where kinda "popular". Probably expensive when brand new but quickly lost value. Around 2010 my father bought a 2001 A190, for as cheap as any base compact from chevy/fiat. It was way more powerful and equiped than anything in the price range.

Doug is the only person who can make me interested to watch a 26 minutes video for a ridiculous a class.

Actually rear power windows was really a luxury option, rarely met on cars in the 90s in Europe. I had a 98 Audi A6, which had rear manual windows.

I'm from Spain and my mom still owns this car. It was my grandmother's who bought it back in the day and now is my mom's daily driver. It runs perfectly without issues despite its age.

I had two of these, both A150s. I gave one to each of my kids as learner cars. I liked them a lot. They're great city cars, fast and nippy enough for the motorway, very forgiving for inexperienced drivers, super reliable and economical. Nobody buys a sub-compact car expecting high performance, they're little runabouts. The A series ticked that box, and then some.

As an European what a joy to see Doug be over the moon about the most basic of cars :D

"I'm the crazy person who has enough money to bankroll this car" best Doug quote ever. I LOLed. The '5' in the Doug Score for "Cool Factor" I absolutely agree with, but is specific to North America. I predict that when you bring this to a Cars & Coffee it will get lots of attention. In Europe it would get none.

My mom had an A140 back in 2004, and when I passed my drivers test she put me on her insurance as a named driver. It was a strange but very…quirky car! Also, even though it’s small it rides high for its size so it was cool towering over the smaller hatchbacks in England…in a bog standard early 00s a class! Going around a corner at any speed was fun 😅

My first car was a '99 A190 and I am still surprised on how spacious and practical it was for its size! Some car manufacturers nowadays really need to have a look at it. The trunk was already quite large, but then you could also slide the rear seats, fold them upwards and even remove them completely to transform your A-Class into a real cargo minivan. And even if the rear legroom was not so good, the ceiling was high enough to welcome tall adults. The performances of the A190 were not bad either with its 125 hp. I reached 160 kph on the German Autobahn but I know its top speed was close to 200 kph with a momentary boost to 220 (only the A190 had this function if I remember correctly). Unfortunately I had to sell it for nothing due to electronical problems that were too expensive to fix, but I had such a good experience with it that my 3rd car was a Mercedes ('04 CLK240) and my current car is a Mercedes too ('23 CLA250e).

Doug, my Mom loved every single day with hers! Around 2002, she made the transition from a 1998 Fiat Panda to an A class in the exact same color of yours. It was comfortable, tossable, but yet with enough space to carry 3 kids and their stuff. Thank you for taking me back to those times (early 2000s in Northern Italy).

My late German grandmother had one of these in green and nicknamed it “Elch” (German for Elk.) when asked about it I recall her describing the Swedish road testers as “dramatic.” Even well into her 70s she would frequently take it up to its max speed on the autobahn 😂 God I miss her. Thanks for the review Doug.

Additional info: There were two more versions of this car - a longer wheelbase one with more passenger space and a minivan version with sliding doors and an even higher rear end called the Vaneo. My parents once had the exact same car as in the video and I drove it from time to time. Was super embarrassing and I always hoped nobody saw me in it, because this car got ridiculed a lot in Germany for it´s look. :D

I owned three W168 A160's between 1999 and 2016, driving a total of 300,000km in them. Mine all had the auto-clutch manual gearbox and the last two were the long wheel base. A great city car, incredible visibility and practicality, especially being able to remove all of the seats except the drivers seat. A fun car to live with . . . . if you have any questions about them, Doug, let me know?

15:37 Doug, you should definitely try to get an A2, it was such a great little car! Had mine for almost 10 years and 260.000 kilometres and i loved it! Totally underrated and unfortunately most people confuse "i don´t like how it looks" with "it is an awful car!".

Fun fact: there where also the very special "Mika Hakkinen" and "David Coulthard" editions. completely in F1 livery and yes they where offered in the Mercedes dealerships back in the day. Quite rare though only 250 units ever build.

One thing you overlooked is that the rear seats are *competely* removable. If I remember correctly, without any tools. That allows for a huge cargo area for a car this size. Before it was mine my grandma used it for flea markets. She actually sold directly out of this car because it was so small it fit into the allowed space and was a cargo box, sofa and sunshade all at the same time. I got it in 2020 and for that time it was still a nice short distance and city car. It had an automatic clutch in a manual to add to the quirk. It's overly compact design became it's demise though when the starter motor died and it was too much of a hassle to repair.

This is so legendary! And very funny. I just love it!

Greetings from Scotland! I had one of these 20 years ago and really enjoyed it. I can't help noticing you missed the fact the rear seats are all removeable to create a huge luggage area. I once brought home a large crate shipped accidently from Newfoundland to Dyce airport instead of Prestwick and I was glad of this feature!

I really love how Doug is trying to live his every dream and wish, he doesn't know but he is also doing what a lot of people aspires to do but don't have the money . Love you Doug! , Also great to see you going back to you and your channel's roots, reviewing your own quirky and ridiculous cars!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤

My first car was a Mercedes A140 'classic fun' from the year 2000. bought for 1800 euro with 150.000 km on the clock. it brought me to france, germany, denmark and belgium. NEVER broke down.. only had to replace the timing chain for 1.000 euros. After 3 years and 50.000 km I sold it for 800 euros with a little more rust, defective hood latch and a high pitch noise in the airconditioning. A great little car.

I had an Avant Garde and it was a big improvement on the base model.i didn't think much of the ride it seemed small and too tall unfortunately. I suppose stiffended or lower springs would help

European here - I'd never consider A class boring or crappy! They were always eye-catching and controversial and very much hete-or-love kind of cars. They are still quite popular and you can see them on streets from time to time. I think it's cool that Doug got one, although I still hope we can see a review of Doug-owned Multipla one day :)

Had an A190 W168 as my first car, loved it. Still miss it - was nippy enough around town and super practical! Maxed it out on the motorway between Hamburg and Berlin a lot and you could see the tank needle drop by the minute!

Hey doug, i was wondering, could you make a video on the gen 1 ford escape? They're super underrated even though they were sold a lot. Several people in my family have had them and they all have lasted long. My grandma got hers up to 300k miles with only routine maintenance. My sisters got up to 240k miles with routine maintenance too. I have a green one and it's been my first car. I've had it for about 2 years now. I've seen not many videos on them and seeing you make a vid on them would make me so happy

Fun fact: the original Citroen DS had a fairly similar safety arrangement for the engine sliding under the passenger compartment in case of an accident - in 1955!

This is one of the best car designs of the last 50 years. It makes sense in every way. It could have perfectly evolved into a hybrid or an electrical car because of the construction.

My wife had an A140 years ago think it was the avantguard model with leather and alloys etc.. she loved it… was very fancy for the time 😂

You are the Best!!! Love all your videos!

9:29 Actually, the center control makes sense when it comes to a perspective of accommodations for both left and right-hand-drive markets. It makes it simpler to manufacture because it’s in the same location whether it’s left or right hand drive.

Fun fact: This A-Class together with its facelift in 2001, was also offered with a long wheel base variant (v168), which added considerable room at the back. Apart from that, the rear seats can be removed completely for increased practicality.

I had a fairly large diecast model of this, right down to the blue color. I made fender flares and custom deep dish wheels for it and stanced it lol. I love the shape of it, hood and windshield sharing a plane. Wheels pushed right to ends with almost no overhang.

i had the A160 class same color (elegant not classic) in 2001....it had leather seats...cd player....a huge folding sunroof....and what made me buy it is the gearbox....i dont know what do you call it...but it was basically a manual shifter without a clutch.....to change gears you let go of the accelerator shift to gear.....it was so much fun to drive.....owned it for 3 years and never had any major issues....the only downside to it is not all mechanics would know how to repair it....all the work should be done from the bottom of the car.......oh man you brought back memories😂

I mean, it's actually really impressive that they managed to give you 5 seats and a decent capacity cargo area in a car that small. It must have been a really interesting challenge for the Mercedes designers to actually do this. I suspect they probably enjoyed the challenge.

So glad you mentioned the failed „Moose Test“😂 As a German Auto enthusiast, I still remember when this was all over the News! Seeing you now owning this stereotype senior citizen‘s German Dream Car brings back soooo much memories and shows how far MB has come with the A-Class since its original design😊

We had a A140 from 2000 so many years, you forgot the most important thiung: The back seats can be moved front / rear, and can be removed completeley! What a practical car that was! Not to mention the sandwich floor, which was meant to contain components for alternative drivetrains. And never came to market. Such an overegnieered concept.

Always wondered what this little merc was all about, now i know! Thx Doug.

He is one step away from importing a Fiat Multipla from Europe, and that would be incredible.

Haha it really is like Doug says it. Here in Germany these A classes are only driven by elderly people and we see them as old shitty cars. Nice seeing a car that I see every day being such a nice, rare thing for Doug👍🏻