Mercedes-Benz CLK-Class Problems

The guiding price range is $7500 to $9500. With such low mileage I would expect yours to fall at the higher end of that range.

It's always a good idea to seek a second opinion and don't just stick with the big dealers, there are lots of independent specialist mechanics who are often more tuned in to problems than dealers. More importantly they often cost less.

It's always a good idea to get a second opinion when facing the prospect of a large repair bill on something like an automatic transmission. Independent specialists who are working on automatic transmissions all the time often have greater knowledge about them than the dealership mechanics who don't work on them every day.

The tyre importers advice is not correct; 45 psi would be too high, even for high speed touring. Use the factory specs as a guide even though the wheels and tyres are not standard. The specs should be found on a sticker on the inside of the fuel filler cap. If for some reason they’re not there I would suggest you run 32 psi front and back for cruising. You could increase the pressure to 35 psi or so if you were driving at high speed for any length of time.

Generally it was always felt that the air-conditioning of European cars wasn’t up to the task for Australia; that was because there wasn’t the demand for powerful A/C in Europe where the climate is generally milder. But when the European carmakers began to move on to the world market and export their cars to places like America where the demand for good A/C is very high they have improved the performance of the A/C systems in their cars. The cars you say have had good air are cars that are typically built for the US market, those you say don’t have good performance are not. A/C systems soak up quite a bit of engine power in driving the compressor and that has a greater impact on smaller engines than big ones, and again the cars you are critical of have smaller engines, so they will also probably run smaller compressors.

NOT really. The CLK430 is a great car and should give you years of motoring pleasure. The only thing to be aware of is that it is a couple of years older than your C-Class, but Benz quality is good enough and you shouldn't have any specific problems. The key is to keep up the servicing.