Certain cars are on the pricey side, yet they look cheap, whereas others are quite affordable and look more expensive than they actually are. If the latter sounds appealing, then you should check out this Benz that's rather old but still looks good – and, more importantly, expensive.
As you can tell, it is a Mercedes-Benz CLK, a moniker that's unknown to the three-pointed star anymore, as it evolved into the two-door E-Class at the end of the 2000s and more recently into the CLE, which serves as the successor to the two-door C- and E-Class.
This is a 2009 car, which means that it was made towards the end of the second-gen's lifecycle. As a result, everything that was an issue when it first came out was fixed by the time this one left the assembly line.
The last CLK was offered with multiple gasoline and diesel engines, with the AMG versions topping them all. There was the 55 AMG, the 63 AMG, the Black Series, and the DTM, which boasted 362, 475, 500, and 574 metric horsepower, respectively. Lesser versions had a V6 under the hood or a straight-four, whereas the low-revving offering comprised a V6, a straight-five, and a straight-four.
Photo: Garage Kept Motors
This one is a CLK 350, meaning that it uses a 3.5-liter V6. The mill was good for 268 horsepower back when it was made, producing 258 pound-feet (350 Nm) of torque. That's hardly impressive compared to the modern establishment, but with 6.2 seconds required to hit 62 mph (100 kph), the CLK 350 was hardly a slouch.
Most of those horses should still run wild under the hood of this car, which had 77,306 miles (124,411 km) on the odo at the time of cataloguing. Finished in white, with a beige ragtop that folds down at the push of a button and a matching interior, it is an interesting proposal that has a lot of life left in it.
With a little bit of work, you can make it look brand-new again, and we certainly wouldn't mind if you changed the wooden trim for aluminum and gave it a modern infotainment system instead of the old stereo to make it look more modern. We'd also replace the folding soft top to breathe new life into it, and we think it would look more interesting with a chrome-delete package and new wheels.
But that's just us, and you're free to do whatever you want with this 14-year-old CLK. Only you will have to pay $14,900 for it, which is the asking price on Garage Kept Motors. Mind you, that's less than a new Nissan Versa, aka America's cheapest new car, which starts at $16,130, and you'd get a great bang for the buck if you go for this Benz instead. But would you?
After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s. Full profile
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