Thank Frankel it’s Friday: Buying an original A‑Class was a brilliant idea

Clearly and despite the fact that prices are rock bottom, out there somewhere there is a lot of latent love for Mercedes’ littlest car. And I know why. So, if you’ll permit and in the hope some of you think similarly fondly of such things, or at least are prepared to be open-minded about it, I’ll explain.

The particular A-Class I just bought is somewhat familiar to me. I first drove it in 1998 when it was brand new and the first A-class to join the Mercedes-Benz press fleet, even though this was long after A-classes had been modified to prevent them from inverting when surprised by an errant elk. It was the subject of Autocar’s road test and would have popped up in plenty of other publications too.

The following year my first child arrived and, living in London as we did, we wanted something super compact for street parking, affordable, but large enough to house a family likely to grow further. I did what many do and was browsing through the small ads (remember them?) for a Golf when a chance conversation with someone in the Mercedes press office alerted me to the fact the A-class was for sale for a competitive price.

Which is how I got to see it from the other side, that of owner and daily driver, rather than road test assessor. And it was extraordinary. Thanks to its sandwich construction which slides much of the bespoke powertrain under the cabin, Mercedes could use that space to create one of the most space efficient interiors of all time. I also had a Jaguar XJR on long term assessment and I remember very clearly trying to decant the contents of the A-Class boot and back seat into the enormous Jag and realising at an early stage it was an entirely futile task. Take the back seats out of the diminutive Benz and you’d need a small van to carry more.

Which is why I kept it for ten years. Then it was crashed into, not badly, but it was by then worth so little it would probably have cost more to repair than it was worth. But by lucky hap Mercedes-Benz was at the time building a small historic fleet of some of its more significant cars and the fact mine was the oldest A-Class in the country and had played a starring role in the car’s launch meant it was worth something to them. Not a lot, but more than throwing it away. And it meant it would live on which made me happy.

In fact the car was not merely repaired, but restored to the standard required by Mercedes of all its cars before they are shown and sampled by a  new generation of motoring journalists. Which is how it spent the ten years after that. Most recently it was involved in the launch of the latest generation of A-Class on a compare and contrast basis.

But with the new car launched and no obvious need for it for the foreseeable future, Mercedes became minded to sell it on. By contrast, now that the children who were partly brought up on its back seat now have driving licences, it seemed a perfect opportunity to reacquaint them with an old friend. Which is why it’s now sitting outside my house.

But theory and reality are different things. My children think it looks hideous and baulk at the fact that unlike the blameless but entirely unremarkable Toyota Aygo they use at present, the A-Class lacks air-conditioning, Bluetooth or any other way to connect a smartphone and download playlists. And to make matters worse, having bought the car unseen and driven it 150 miles home, I’m fast reaching the conclusion it’s far too nice for them anyway. The one thing I’ve noticed is that if you let teenagers drive an immaculate car, it won’t stay that way for long.

So I’m not really sure what I’ll do with it, but I’m not going to sell it any time soon. I’ll probably just retain it as a small, not-so secret guilty pleasure and wait until the world wakes up to what brilliant little cars these are and their prices head through the roof. And yes, I expect that will take quite some time, which is absolutely fine by me.