So here we are. Your mother warned you, your friends warned you, but you just couldn’t stay away and decided to buy a W215. ABC will surely bankrupt you and destroy your entire family line. At least that’s what you’ve read and saw on YouTube. These cars are also now super cheap and can be had for the cost of two BigMacs. Right?

Well, not quite. These cars were very rare to begin with and now they’re even more rare. A well sorted 55K version can be had for anywhere between $23000-$30000, with very few for sale across the country. So, picking the correct car will likely impact your experience with them. Onto our experience with the bank account blasting CL55.

Inside or Outside

Outside, clearly. We decided to go for a car that had a clear track record of maintenance at the dealer, with receipts and came from a rust-free state. However, the exterior and interior had some issues. That, however, is less time consuming and cheaper to fix than costly mechanicals parts. The previous owner had taken the hit already, so we decided to bring this car back, looks wise. A word of advice for future owners/restorers…The Florida sun and humidity will simply eat your plastics. You will be able to tell which side of the car got most sun just by looking at the interior plastics.

Emergency Fixes

Why is it raining inside the car? Well, the answer can be complicated. Roughly 6 hours and about 1100$ later, the rear and left side of the car are leak-proof:

• Trunk mounted LED light replaced (OEM).
• Left/Right trunk/body moldings replaced (OEM).
• Taillight gaskets replaced (OEM).
• Upper left window seal removed and installed correctly.
• Wire loom grommet fixed at rear right tail light.
• Seats removed.
• Carpet removed.
• Car dried
• Parts reinstalled.

So, how come? Well, a lot of these items are normal wear and tear items on a lot of Mercedes cars. Others were shoddy repairs at the dealer, also seemingly part of routine inspections. The good news is that the leaks were fairly recent, and no damage was done internally…well almost none.

Do You Even Lift Bro?

I would bet the majority of people driving these cars when they came out initially no, probably not. Hence the power trunk. Ours was unplugged and taped off with a note saying “power trunk inop”. Interesting but why? Oh, that’s why. The wonderful Mercedes engineers decided to design leaky taillight gaskets and proceed to place all valuable parts in the interior of the car in 2 wells, right by the taillights. Navigation, amplifier and all related components? Check. Hydraulic pump to operate the power trunk? Check. There was no saving this one so a cool $300 later, the new pump and ram were installed.

But Wait! There’s More

This seems to be the theme with these cars. After fixing the trunk we noticed that the vacuum action of the trunk latch assembly was not working. These little actuators are known to fail so $60 and a few days later we have a new one on hand…hopefully not made of crumbling cheese this time.

Upon closer inspection of the area, we noticed signs of leakage coming from the LED brake light assembly higher on the trunk. We had already replaced the part but decided to follow the trail. Oh, of course. Right into the trunk open/close button. Another great engineering choice and location. A few dollars later, we have a new button.

So, time to power open and close the trunk, right? Not so fast, this is a W215 after all. Time to break out Star Diagnosis and normalize the trunk. Imagine you had to update the firmware on your laptop every time it ran out of battery…How would the laptop know when the lid is closed or open without power? Nobody has that kind of technology.

So What Now?

Now we rip out the interior and rebuild it, starting with the usual suspects: headliner, door panel fabrics, pillar fabrics, etc. Oh, and we will spruce it up a little too, so purists can tell us how our car is now worth less money because we modified the original interior and removed the saggy, smelly OEM fabrics from 20 years ago. We prefer non-moldy and chemically laden air.