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Junkyard Gem: 1998 Mercedes-Benz SLK 230

Junkyard Gem: 1998 Mercedes-Benz SLK 230


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For more than 20 years, the folks in Stuttgart built sporty roadsters based on the C-Class chassis, finally killing off the SLC during the 2020 model year. The first of those cars to arrive on our shores was the SLK 230, which debuted here as a 1998 model. Its retractable hardtop established a trend for convertibles that only recently has ended as their complexity and weight (not to mention long-term maintenance) weren't worth whatever benefits they possessed over increasingly improved cloth roofs. Nearly a quarter-century later, here's one of those '98s, photographed in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard.

For 2001, the SLK 320 and its V6 engine became available here, but the U.S.-market SLKs for 1998-2000 were all 230s.

This 2.3-liter supercharged inline-four made 190 horsepower, which is about what the six-cylinder BMW Z3 produced. You could get this car with a manual transmission, but this one (like nearly all U.S.-market SLKs) has the automatic.