Matt's Ultimate LA Daily Driver: 2001 Mercedes SL500! - (City) One Take

Hello everyone, welcome to West Los Angeles and my almost new

2001

Mercedes SL 500. Now we're going to start this video in motion because today we're not in the canyons, today we're in the

city

and that's because I bought this. car for

city

duty I bought a Focus RS, a street rally car with rigidity and a stick shift, since a

daily

was not a great

daily

, so I bought a daily and here is the

2001

or Sadie's

sl500

sport, It has a 3 and 5 liter v8. The Mercedes Corporate V8 engine is something of an end to that classic, boxy Mercedes styling.

By then they had switched to the rounded S classes and the round B SL came later. Five-speed automatic gearbox. Dumb old school automatic gearbox. Pretty average options for this type. of the car, it's got heated seats, it's got xenon lights, it's got a light-up hardtop and then of course a power soft top underneath, it's got the hair screen back there and it's got, you know, the body kit and the AMG 5 star wheels, that's all. Great, it's a gray interior, it's not a black interior, I bought this car with fifty-four thousand four hundred miles on it now it has fifty-six thousand five hundred miles on it.

I've done a little bit of filming and we're sitting in a light. I'm doing it in real time, but it weighs, it says it's eighteen minutes from here to the office, which is where I'm going to record a podcast with Tonopah smoking, so I'll

take

you with me and you can see what it is. I like driving in Los Angeles and why I might want a car. Dynamically it is not so good. It is a personal luxury coupe. I don't even want to call it a sports car. It doesn't really drive like a sports car. SL "Sport Light" or the German translates as "Sport Slicked" and is neither sporty nor light.

I don't know if it's heavy, but I don't really care. It is a very attractive car. It has aged very well. The style becomes more beautiful every day for me. and when I tell people about it, oh yeah, they look great and I agree about the button, so things to keep in mind with the SL, the 600 has a lot of unique parts, it may be more expensive to maintain this one, being a 500 it's actually pretty easy to maintain all the undercarriage stuff is pretty simple you can get most of it like if you know Auto Zone or O'Reilly the problem areas are the top and the power top of the hat cup has to work properly, it's hydraulic, so it can be a real problem if it doesn't work right, it's very expensive, there are some sensors and some small unique parts, like computers, things for the interior, the drive trains are pretty tough I mean they made this engine for a long time the previous ones had the four cam engine this is the single cam engine some of the Mercedes purists look down on me because I have the same cam engine look what we're doing here with 300 horsepower you would basically see more than a quarter acceleration in this car, I never drive around there hello The point is that it is really comfortable, these are renovated cars, they have a little more space at the beginning of the course, the air Conditioning is excellent and my friends at Clarion hooked me up with a system.

I haven't had a system in the car since 2001, 2002, this year. car, so I wanted them to make something a little old like what I had in the past, but that really sounds crisp and clear and has all the modern features, so they gave me this system. I didn't pay for it, they did, but it's a flip out on the front and then this beautiful thing made to fit in a box on the back with a really subtle built-in amp inside. It sounds great all of a sudden. I don't remember the model names of all the things they put in the car, but I will. put it in the video description.

I can't play music because the music licensing rights are on YouTube, but it works and there are no random cars and it's just the best. Also, the rear view camera with GPS off is very good and connects by phone. Bluetooth, they put a USB port like this car, now it has all the things I need on the phone because I'm in the car a lot, so what I want is a car that looks great, drives good and is comfortable. sit down that was automatic I mean thank god you know no they made very few s l with manuals.

I just wanted automatic, you know, I was tired of doing this the first year, the second year, stop in first, second, stop. and also the maintenance on this car is pretty good it's a one owner car like I said it has about 55,000 miles and 56,000 miles on it and it's really clean it's never been in an accident it had service records and I looked at a few different ones of these and then these orders are not one hundred percent perfect, there's a piece of chipped trim here and there's a piece of chimpanzee trim here and honestly, that's it, the rest of your nice place, there's a little faded spot on the soft top like I don't really care and this was a b-plus level price because I think an a-level card unless you want an a-plus level card, you'll have to pay for it and it won't be cheap you know, if you want one in red, the red ones are hard to get and have a higher price but I looked at a few and decided on this one too, it should have good traffic so I had to do it but it's not necessary.

I took it to a reputable independent mechanic in Culver City who did a full day like a service and a bee service, it's like minor and major, and then they did the bee service which was like the cabin filter changing a oil. filter, brakes checked, transmission checked, differential serviced, differential resealed, then had BBI Autosport put in H&R springs from Europe. There are basically two springs that are like two approved and they were standard equipment on the SL 70 SLE 73. so they reduce the ride height by an inch, then I bought new Bilstein shocks, Bilstein shocks, which are the original ones and they weren't very expensive, and then I had Vivi, I did an alignment and now I have a car that feels good and In fact, it still hasn't joined an inch and in the mall I just left there was some joint there and it works great and with the new shocks and a new spring, you just know it firms up, it firms up. but it firms it up from a 2001 perspective bringing it to the firmness of 2006, not the firmness of 2015 or 17, so it firms it up but firms it up to a place where it feels a little more responsive oh, we also changed the steering damper replacement that cost like fifty five dollars and it's like a little damper that goes on the steering to reduce vibrations when braking and I didn't really need it but it helped so I bought this car for 16 and I changed it and I've done it and 24 also just Michelin released a set of super sport pilot tires that they gave to me and I took them and I love them.

I added some supercar

driver

s that they don't make and tried the ps4 and I like them. too, but they don't make them for this size yet, so they're still PSS for now, so between this, the shocks, the springs and you know, the tires, the ride quality on the 405 and just on these streets is great, so something bad. Things about the car, the steering is super numb, you know, it's just super numb steering, but I don't care, this is life for me, the brakes are weird, it's like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing difficult, there is a big dead zone. up and then, you know, right down, pretty strong engrams.

No, I don't love it, but that's how it is, you get used to it and that's it, sometimes in the city you want to put it. it's in four instead of me, but that to me is pretty normal, so it doesn't

take

that last gear when you're going like thirty-five and you have multiple downshifts, but as you can hear, you know it's tight like a drum in here. on big bumps you hear a little creaking but that's what you know, the hardtop body is like hydraulically hooked there but it doesn't look like that, that's the top, it's really good, 95% of the When I take it off, it's what I like to wear during the summer because it's really hot here and when I go out I mean it's 80 degrees here, which isn't really hot, but I was up in the canyon before filming some stuff. and it was 96 so it helps keep things cooler in here and I like the way the hardtop looks and then I'll take it off for the winter.

There is a faulty section here. I'll take the hardtop off for the winter because in the winter it's like 75 during the day with a near stop in the winter it's like 75 during the day so it will be more likely to go up and down. I'll burn my brain out like crazy, so we've gone about three miles and 11 minutes. m Los Angeles, kids, don't you need 700 horsepower here? What else do we talk about? The guys at Clarion when they put in this amazing stereo. I asked them a couple of things I wanted. I didn't want them to make the cut.

I wanted them to know everything. to be reversible, which luckily it is, means the head didn't have to stick out about half an inch, they would have had to cut something out back there, but I wanted it to be reversible, so they didn't do that and then they left too. my trunk alone, so this shelf back here went down a couple more inches, but everything is very compacted. I can actually still put bags or whatever back here and then the trunk, which is really big, hopefully I'll show a photo. At this point the trunk holds a lot of stuff, it holds the case plus suitcases, like for me and my girl, this car has a really big trunk, especially for a car that has a power folding roof and it's a lot of fun, you know what it was Like oh, it's got a really big fuel tank and a touring tank, you know, it's like an almost 20 gallon tank.

I think it was indicating half before and I put more than 10 gallons in it, so it has a large tank with automatic climate control. the top is obviously electric, it has automatic power windows, two-mode power seats, power mirrors, power door locks, you know, with the stereo and a suspension that behaves like a car, not necessarily more modern, but it is behaves as this car should. Behave, you know, when it was new. I think this is a great little package. It's good to just ride around Los Angeles in this kind of traffic and this is what I go to my office, we go to the supermarket. meetings like the ones I do, you know, I do the canyons whenever I can, but we should go this way, but this car is not for that, this car went up to the canyons today specifically if it could be on this side of town to be visited. but for the most part I understood that those cars covered this is a strain of the city car and you know, a Tesla, a volt or a Prius, very environmental city cars, but you know it's even more than environmental and that's buying a car that I'm already here instead of the world making you a new car, so it's me being an environmentalist buying a used German car that runs properly, spending the money to make sure it continues to run properly for a long time and look, I'm the reason these videos were taken.

It's been so long since I've been out of town. I travel about half the month to be able to buy this car. Do a lot of preventive maintenance, which I just did. I just did all the elements that are like the big mileage. I know incremental items and I put three thousand miles a year on this car. You know, that would be a lot. Is this this type of driving? You can do this kind of driving for hours 25 miles ago, so that's my Benz. It's amazing, it's amazing if I When I saw this, the prices on these and I thought, that car is great for that little money and I don't really feel like I mean, yeah, he puts them on it for maintenance, like you know, you gave them to him. this car for 16,000 and I will trade it in when I discard it, assuming it runs properly it will ever be cheaper than that.

I can't, I won't do that as long as it works well and I'm committed enough to keep it in Workington. now we're getting close to the office 15 minutes we've done about four miles so that's what the driving is like I hope you enjoyed it and I plan to ride this Mercedes for a long time because it's great, it feels great cruising so thank you, thank you, thank you Venu, the guys at Clarion for giving me a stereo that's pretty awesome and all I asked for was bluetooth and they put in all this stuff, which is really crazy, so there it is. they're cool that's really cool and for the guys that BBI Autosport and a Philips car in Newport Beach normally I wouldn't buy a car at a used car lot but these guys had a lot of Ferraris there so I thought they knew what were doing and thank you all for watching.

See you later.