Quick!

How bad an idea is a 2001 ml55 amg with 200k on it? Challenge budget priced.

Bad enough for all of us to get out the popcorn.

Good enough that i can't imagine you losing much money on it if you keep your expectations low and know when to cut your losses.

It's the inverse of the square of how easy it is to swap an LS engine into it.

Great idea. Do it!!

Terrible idea if you actually plan on driving and owning the car. Fantastic idea for the challenge however.

Going to make one hell of a winter beater. Couldn't resist. I'll post pictures when I get home.

Drive it until something expensive breaks, then sell it for $1000 as a parts car.

What's the worst that could happen?

all signs point to YES

Update: all the pixels work

pics!

Just stay away from the vodka.

Epic challenge potential. DD, no.

My advice:
-cut all but one coil off of each spring.
-re-install only that one coil on each corner to get super low non flippy challenge cornering goodness.
-dominate all at challenge!
-switch one-coil per corner setup for one coil removed per corner setup.
-sell to me.
-laugh as I document my foolishness and suffering on GRM.

Little crack in the front bumper. Little rust creep around the lower edges. Both doors on the opposite side have some damage along the lower 1/3rd.

But it drives great. No warning lights on. A/C is super cold. Radio is loud. Loads of power.

Small clunk if you leave the line with too much authority. Not much else to fault.

Wow! Very pretty! Please keep us posted on how it treats you. Thats a neat ride for challenge dough.

You want to buy a vehicle that depreciated from $65,000.00 to $2000.00 in 14 years. What could go wrong?

I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but yeah, I do (did).

These depreciate like they do because the overriding thoughts when it needs to be repaired is that it needs to be done at the Mercedes dealership which quickly becomes more expense than it's worth.

If you can do the vast majority of repairs, it makes MUCH more sense. Especially when the buy-in is so low

Alleged Backstory; Two owner vehicle.

Original purchaser is/was the owner of a large machine shop here in town.

Owner two, the guy I bought it from, claims that two years ago his Grand-Am laid down for good and he was without a vehicle. It wasn't clear to me what his relationship was with the original owner of the Mercedes, but there was some kind of sympathy arrangement in which he got the ML55 for $3,000. Payments may have been involved, I didn't totally understand. Since that time he's only driven it 8000 miles. During a recent routine oil change he was informed that the rear brakes were due for replacement, and estimated at $700. As he is a part-time pizza delivery driver (they have company cars thank goodness), he did not have $700 for this crucial safety item. Some other family member offered him a mid-80's era Jeep Cherokee for free as solution to the situation. So he figured the $3000 he paid for the ML, minus $700 for brakes, minus some arbitrary depreciation...=$2,000.

Oh, don't feel bad, I'd have been tempted to buy it too. That's like the fire sale of the century, as long as it doesn't actually catch on fire. It would be worth $2K just to play with it until it has a catastrophic failure.

Pic no work.

That works, but she's missing the Y, M, and C.

Typical Mercedes build quality.

Swank Force One wrote: Bad enough for all of us to get out the popcorn. Good enough that i can't imagine you losing much money on it if you keep your expectations low and know when to cut your losses.

I would venture that this is where the current owner is at right now...