My 1999 Mercedes-Benz SLK 230 Kompressor — Back to Top-Down Living (Part 1)

By late 2012, I found myself doing something that, at the start of the year, I never would have expected.

I was shopping for my third car of the year.

At that point, I had already purchased—and in one case already moved on from—two vehicles that year and was somehow lining up a third. The Volt had quickly become my daily driver, and it handled that role better than anything I had owned before. It was efficient, comfortable, and genuinely enjoyable to drive. But it also made something clear.

I missed having a fun car.

Around the time I owned the Patriot, I had briefly gone down a different path in search of that feeling. I started out with a brand-new Roketa 50cc moped that I used for bopping around town, and I really enjoyed it. It was simple, cheap to run, and fun in a way that didn’t take itself too seriously. The problem was, it was slow. Really slow. It limited me to just Tillamook.

After getting my motorcycle endorsement, I upgraded to a 1982 Honda CB350 Nighthawk. That opened things up quite a bit, and for a while, I really enjoyed riding it. But one slightly slick day, I had a moment. I came a little too close to rear-ending an F-150 at a stoplight, and it was enough to make me rethink things.

That was the end of motorcycles for me.

If I wanted something open-air, it was going to have crumple zones, seatbelts, and airbags. Something where I wasn’t the crumple zone.

I had really enjoyed my time with a Volvo convertible, and that feeling had never quite gone away. When I had been looking at the Mini Roadster earlier in the year, it had brought that idea back to the surface. Even though I had gone in a completely different direction with the Volt, the thought of having something small, fun, and open to the air stuck with me.

This time around, though, I approached it a little more practically. I set a budget of about $9,000. I could get a loan through TLC at a decent interest rate, keep the payment reasonable, and I wasn’t willing to stretch it out forever—three years was the max I wanted to finance something like this.

The day I went out shopping, I had three cars lined up to drive, each with a different purpose. The plan was simple: drive all three and figure out what I actually wanted.

One was a mid-2000s Mustang convertible with a V6 and a manual transmission. The other was an early-2000s Miata. And the third was a 1999 Mercedes-Benz SLK 230 Kompressor.

I started with the Mercedes. And I never made it to the other two.

The SLK felt completely different from what I expected. It was solid in a way neither of the other options likely would have been. This one had low miles and drove really nicely. Everything about it felt tight and well put together.

I also won’t pretend the badge didn’t factor into the decision. I liked the idea of owning a Mercedes. There was a certain level of prestige that came with it, and at that point in my life, it felt like something I could finally enjoy without it raising eyebrows the way it might have when I was working at the school district.

The heated seats were almost comically powerful—easily strong enough to keep you comfortable with the top down in 45-degree weather, which, for me, was a real selling point.

But what really sealed it was the roof.

The metal folding hardtop felt like magic the first time I saw it in action. One minute it was a coupe, the next it was a convertible. Having already lived through a slightly leaky soft top, the idea of a solid roof that disappeared when you wanted it to was incredibly appealing.

That was it.

I bought the first car I drove.

Just like that, I was back in a convertible.

Not long after I brought it home, my dad helped me rearrange my slightly oversized one-car detached garage so that I could fit both the Volt and the Mercedes inside. It took a little creativity, but we made it work. Seeing both cars tucked into that space felt like a small win—and made the whole two-car setup feel a little more real.

Top-down driving on the Oregon coast is hard to beat. Even on cooler days, you could drop the roof, turn the heat—and the seats—up, and enjoy it. The air, the sound, the feeling of being just a little more connected to everything around you—it was something I had missed more than I realized.

The SLK fit into my life in a different way than my previous fun cars had. It wasn’t about pushing it hard or carving corners as much as it was about the experience. It was comfortable, quiet when you wanted it to be, and still fun when the road opened up.

I also found myself taking it on visits to other TLC branches more often than I probably should have. I got pretty good at packing computer equipment into the trunk and passenger seat in a way that still allowed the top to go down. Preserving that functionality became a bit of a personal challenge. If I was going to take the Mercedes instead of the Volt, the roof still needed to come down.

One of the highlights was a road trip down to Palm Springs with my sister.

My grandparents had a timeshare there and would spend about a month in Palm Springs each winter. In early 2013, they invited me to come down and visit. I had never really done a solo road trip like that before, and it seemed like the perfect excuse to put the Mercedes to use and escape to some warmer weather.

At the last minute, my sister Cami decided she wanted to come along. That worked for me—with one condition: pack light. We had to preserve the SLK’s ability to put the top down.

It turned into a great adventure.

The car was a fantastic grand tourer. It just ate up the miles, steady and comfortable, with none of the drama you might expect from a small convertible. We had a simple rule for the trip—once the temperature hit 70 degrees, the top came down.

The first day of the drive went perfectly.

On the second day, though, the Mercedes had a moment. The engine started to stumble, and the check engine light came on. We pulled off the highway, shut the car off, sat there for a minute, and then started it back up. It smoothed out immediately. The check engine light stayed on, but it ran fine.

So we kept going.

And it stayed fine—for the rest of the trip and the entire drive home.

While we were in Palm Springs, I took a day trip over to Los Angeles with my grandpa to visit the Petersen Automotive Museum. We paid extra to go down into the vault, which ended up being one of the highlights of the entire trip. I got to see a GM EV1 in person, which felt especially fitting given what I was driving at the time, and I also got to meet one of my heroes—a screen-used Herbie from The Love Bug.

That part stuck with me for another reason, too. My grandpa and I didn’t do a lot of things like that together, just the two of us. Getting to share that experience—and to have him along for the drive—made it more meaningful than I expected. It was also the first time he had driven a Mercedes, and he came away impressed. He thought it was a really nice car.

The place my grandparents were staying—the Oasis resort—just happened to be right across the street from Mercedes-Benz of Palm Springs. I called them to see about having it checked out, but they quoted about $300 just to plug it into the computer. Since the car had already gone hundreds of miles without another issue, I decided to roll the dice and skip it.

It made it home without another hiccup.

Not long after we got back, life shifted into a different kind of project.

My dad, my grandpa, and I—really, mostly my dad and my grandpa—started remodeling my 1940s bungalow. We tore down a wall and gutted the living room, dining room, and kitchen. For a few months, I was essentially living in a construction zone. Dust, tools, exposed studs—it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it felt productive.

The Mercedes played a role during that phase, too—just not in the way a truck would have. It became more of a clean break from everything that was going on at the house. After a day of dust, noise, and construction, it was something completely separate. I could get in, put the top down, and for a little while, none of that followed me.

I found myself going for drives more often than I probably needed to. Part of that was the car—I genuinely enjoyed it—but part of it was also where life was at the time. I was still single, and outside of work, church, and small group, I didn’t have a lot going on socially. The SLK filled some of that space. It gave me a reason to get out, clear my head, and just go.

And then I met…. her.

 

Related CC reading:

Future Classic: 1997-2004 SLK 200/230/320AMG (R70)

Curbside Find: 1999-2004 Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class – A Drop Top Mic Drop

Classic CARmentary: 1999 Mercedes-Benz SLK230