General Comments:

My E320 1994/5 Coupe was in for repair, this was a loan car. Hard seats, hard ride, and bounces and bangs about on rough surfaces. Start/stop taken off, but you have to do this every time you start off again, it self resets. Goes round corners as if on rails.

Interior design was awful; black everywhere and blackened out passenger windows and rear screen. All round visibility poor, especially glancing around over one's shoulder. Lane changing on fast roads depends on using wing mirrors as using the rear view mirror doesn't give a great deal of width of vision.

Accelerator was very sensitive at 1-5 mph, so be careful when getting in and starting off for the first time.

Electrically heated seats bit too fierce at setting 3.

No star at the end of bonnet, so with that modern interior you could be driving anything. Not cheap either, won't miss it.

Faults:

I bought this MB GLA 220 4Matic AMG in May 2015 - eventually. The original car that I wanted to purchase was sold to two different people by the same franchise.

After having the car for one month, the automatic stop/start failed while I was waiting to turn right in the middle of the traffic lights. Imagine the screams from my daughter as the car was stuck in the middle of the traffic lights with cars moving in other directions.

At this point the MB franchise decided to replace the starter motor without even identifying if the starter motor was faulty. This led to a heated debate with the lead mechanic at the MB franchise - how could he claim to fix the problem without knowing if the part he replaced was the cause of the problem?

One year later, the engine started over-revving randomly. If the car was driven for several miles the performance became very sluggish until only two of the seven gears were available (and a random message appeared about the reverse gear being unavailable). The roadside assistance was unable to fix the problem as their servers were down (they had been down for one week, so why did they send a person who they knew could not help me?). The car was taken to the local MB dealership and I collected it a couple of days later. The car had allegedly received a software upgrade and a road test. After driving the car for less than 5 minutes, it was apparent that the problem had not been fixed. During this short drive I identified that the problem disappeared if the auto start/stop was disabled (back to the original problem). The car was returned to the MB dealership that night. The dealership, relaying information from the MB HQ, admit that they have never seen this problem on this type of car. In a poor attempt to resolve the problem they have replaced the clutch and the gearbox without rectifying the issue (they are guessing at the cause of the problem). The car has now been in the dealership for 4 weeks and they refuse me a replacement. I am now paying a lot of money for a car that I do not have and they cannot fix. The customer service has been shocking, refusing to return my e-mails and refusing to send me a copy of their customer care charter - so that I cannot follow the agreed complaints procedure.