Hello Everybody,

After my first short post yesterday, I though I should probably say hello properly

I have followed the forum for quite some time now and signed up for a password a few months ago. The depth of knowledge about these cars is rather impressive and all the documented info available is very helpful. However, I have thankfully not needed much help as the car has only 59k km (37k miles?) under its belt and has been almost trouble free, even though it is more my winter car and sees the worst of the weather.

Mine is a Silver/Tan 1997 20V N/A that I bought new almost 11 years ago and am tidying up for its 5th bi-annual MOT, or TUEV, as it is known here. It needed a couple of easy things sorting this year (battery and exhaust), and I have finally got round to sorting those damp handbrake cables. The back brakes had been run quite a few times frozen so I replaced the discs and pads as well. The front discs rumble , so I will do those at the weekend and hope it settles everything down. They are Zimmermann cross-drill discs and I get the impression that they are a bit noisy whatever. These were put on 4 years ago, so a refresh is not so painful

We are originally form the UK and I have been working here since 1995, having planned to stay 2 or three years. We actually live in Sindelfingen, 15 kms south-west of Stuttgart. It is where the main Mercedes production plant is and every third car seems to be a silver or very dark MB. Talk about exclusivity

So, if you are on the lookout for an empty Autobahn for a top speed blast (A81 south of Stuttgart is often empty but the surface is not the best, bit like most German roads nowadays), and you find yourself down here, let me know

Regards,
Neil.

Welcome to the forum

Great post Neil and Willkommen

Welcome aboard! Are you a member on the German owners forum too?

Looking to sell more books Mark?

Well, you know, if you dont ask....

I must admit that I have not mustered up the courage to join the German forum. My spoken German is OK, but to write well, I have to look so much up (I don't like to make mistakes if I can help it), it takes the fun out of it.

Most of my work has been with Hewlett-Packard and the common language is English so less than perfect German is accepted. I did French and Latin in school, so I had no real German before I came out here. Learning a new language well without the motivation of need is not easy for me. I'm not a linguist by nature.

Even when you look up the words it's no help as they use so much "slang", but still worth a look every now and again.

MFG

I can understand a lot of the "auto-slang" when I hear or see it, but it just is not in my active vocab. to use it. I read the German forum from time to time.

My grammar is poor (and it starts as fundamentally as is it der, die or das ) and I know it is poor, so I have to keep checking what I have written. Takes ages so I leave my German writing to important stuff.

If I can understand you neil your spelling and grammer is fine welcome btw.

Der, Die, Das? Just mumble... it's what our kids in Berlin do; native speakers and they still forget

Welcome to the forum Neil, excellent first post and great to see you have the perfect coupé model too

Welcome mate

Why thank you Stan - glad you've seen the light at last.

Neil

Perfect model for me, that's for sure! 11 years and almost only normal consumables as running costs. Who said Coupe ownership has to be expensive, provided you don't go anywhere in it

Hi and welcome