gtrucinski

I found a 1986 5000CS and couldn't believe the features for the money. Wanted a winter car to avoid using my M5. I never looked back and love ever mile in my audi's. My 1998 A8 has 256K (208K are mine) and is going strong. Best car I've ever owned. If you are not mechanical and don't like working on cars then pass and buy yourself a Honda with no soul. But if you have the interest and the skill to learn, you will have miles of smiles...nothing compares to audi and that D2 A8 is a fantastic car. Good luck to you.

nossisnave

My 1990 Accord that had no soul and l still had to work on it. Bought it from a friend, one of the injectors had gotten clogged and was just dripping gas. Ended up eating through the top of the piston; we pulled it apart and replaced all the pistons and rings. It ran great after that, ended up driving it for another 100k. Really not that bad of a car, decent to drive w/ a stick but the body looked horrible cuz it was rusted really bad around the rear wheelwells.

twentysevenlitres

Auto in the CLK is still the 5HP24

peja16

I've been looking at some used BMW or Mercedes as well. I would like a 4dr and something with a little get up yet still has luxury to it. Are BMW and Mercedes just as expensive to work on?

I'm not opposed to working on my own car and am quite capable of it, unless it comes to something like rebuilding a transmission.

The AWD would come in handy though during the winter months.

Perhaps I just need to stick to Cadillac since they are probably cheaper to work on and I have a dealership here.

Decisions Decisions....

pocketchange

Excellent Question,
After determining which Audi you've set you mind to, please don't get hot for the first one you look at. If you are looking for a beater, I'd say to steer clear of an Audi. On the other hand, if you are prepared to follow through and spend the time it takes to locate a clean and straight example, go for it. Open the oil filler and if it's nice and clean, it's likely a good unit if the body is straight and the interior looks decent. Just be prepared to some money.

Been there, done that and would do it all over again, in spite of it taking me over a year to find the particular model I was stuck on.. pc

chinny4290

Sorry to revive an old thread but I'm a factoid and was reading through this thread and had to correct...

Mercedes-Benz never used a ZF auto in their entire production history, and that's because they design, build and make their own automatics, in house!

Benz's only 5-Speed auto is known as the 5G-TRONIC, coded as the 722.5xx transmission.

twentysevenlitres

Funnily enough I recently read about this myself, as I was doing some research for my mates W210 E Class.
He wanted a dipsick and was telling me about the ones that Mercedes uses to dip his transmission.
Curious I read up on it and found out all about Mercedes building their own transmissions!
And yes, they use a dipstick - ZF could learn from that!

So thankyou for correcting this thread, and my apologies for getting it wrong!

chinny4290

No problem ! We're all here to help each other out. And yes, my 1994 W124 E320 had a tranny dipstick...BMW's of equal time can't even brag about that (suck it ZF! haha)

dan87951

W124's and W126's are probably the best built Mercedes EVER to come out of the factory!

silverd2

About MB auto trans's (and noticing your sig cars):

You likely already know this, but all auto trans 928's used MB trans's ...ZF nor Porsche ever developed one for these cars.

I've had three 928's in the past (an '84 S manual and a pair of '89 S4's, one manual & one auto) and the ONLY major part (other than PS racks...common failure in these cars) that ever failed in any of these cars (totaling 100's of K miles) was the auto trans at just over 100K miles. That did NOT leave a good taste in my mouth for MB transmissions.