AMG Mercedes-Benz - The winning edition

So I ended up with a silver one, instead of a red one. The car is still in San Jose as I type this, but I wired the payment for it today.

So what do we have? It's a 1997 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG. AMG is Mercedes in house tuner division. Basically the same thing as the BMW M division, SVT for Ford or SRT for Chrysler. It's the zoomy one. It has a hand build I6 with 276 horsepower at 5750 rpm and 284 lb-ft of torque at 4000, sport suspension and all the luxury of a Mercedes-Benz. 1997 was also the only year this car was made with the 5 speed automatic transmission. I wish the car had a manual, but AMG products have never used manual transmissions.

My car has ~103,000 miles. And has lived it's entire life not in the Midwest. This was important. If I was going to buy a car older than 10 years that'll be driven on a nearly daily basis and have to live outside, as this one will, I wanted one that hadn't been exposed to Midwestern winters and salt. So basically I was looking for a Florida, Texas, Arizona or California car. According to Carfax this one was sold in Georgia, lived in Florida for two years and then moved to California in 2000 where it has lived since then.

It has black leather interior, a sunroof, Bose sound system, and a worthless built in Mercedes phone that only works on a now non existent network. It has four doors for easy access to kids and car seats. That is important, for it was a big selling getting Anke to agree to this.

The C36 replaces the Alero in our household. It'll be my car while the Vibe will essentially become Anke's. But it still won't get driven most days as Anke and I commute to work together 85% of the time. I'll have to get some snow tires for winter duty, as it's a rear wheel drive car with bloody wide tires. The transmission does have a winter mode though, but I'm not quite sure what that does.

I'll be in San Jose next month for an IBM conference so I may drive the car back then, but we're also thinking about having it shipped back on a truck. I'm not sure what we're going to do yet. All in all I pretty pleased with it and very happy with the price that I paid. No reserve auctions on Ebay rule.