1987 Mercedes 190E 2.6

Certainly the car I've lived longest with, it'd done a quarter of a million miles before it eventually died. Cause of death? A bloody MOUSE! The furry little bastard - dispite being incredibly cute on the odd occasion he surfaced - managed to chew through various parts of the wiring loom. It was repairable on two occasions, but dispite my best attempts to trap / kill / otherwise dispose of him, he eventually shorted out the ECU which proved to be an uneconomical repair.

Mice problems aside, the car was incredibly reliable and covered over 75,000 miles with nothing more than oil and filter changes every 10,000 miles or so. It was disturbingly quick, too, and had a 5-speed manual gearbox rather than the more usual 4-speed auto you'd expect.

Silly Yokohama tyres combined with a Sportline handling kit meant it also handled deceptively well and the brakes were possibly the best of any car I've ever owned although they did start to fade after driving "enthusiastically" for a while :-)

Fuel consumption seemed to hover around the 23-26 MPG mark, but if you were gentle it'd happily rumble along in the low 30s.

Nothing really bad to say about this car - well worth the £3000 I paid for it and I'm starting to feel the need to buy something similar due to the incessant problems with my current runabout.

Spec

• 2.6-litre inline-6 multi-point fuel injection engine
• 5-speed dog-leg (Cosworth?) transmission
• Sportline springs and dampers
• Double-wishbone front suspension
• 6-link independent rear suspension
• Yokohama 235/65 ZR16 tyres
• Ventilated, cross-drilled front discs, ventilated rear discs
• Four-channel ABS
• Cruise control
• Electric windows, electric sunroof
• Silly AMG leather steering wheel which simply didn't fit the car at all :-)
• Resident mouse