After my father’s passing last December, my family and I were left with a bunch of belongings of my late father. Apart from still trying to cope with our lost, we are still in the process to finish off a number of items related to my late father. This include 2 cars my father left, one is a 2004 Mitsubishi Storm L200 and the other is a 1995 Mercedes 230E (W124). I’ve been using the Mitsubishi Storm for a couple of months since the car almost got abandoned because it was a challenge for my late father having to maintain 2 cars at the same time.

My trustworthy red Proton Iswara Aeroback 1.3 is currently being used by my wife. I never drove the Mercedes when my father was around. Being the eldest son and the named driver based on the insurance policy of the Mercedes 230E, I was the most eligible person to take care of the car after my father’s passing. The car cannot be sold yet because it needs a trust handler’s authority to issue an authorization letter before changing changing ownership and being sold off. Because of that, I’ll be driving around with the car until all of the other stuff relating to my father’s death has been cleared.

Front view of the Mercedes 230E

Rear view of the Mercedes 230E

Some good review about this Mercedes Benz 230E, apart from being huge, it’s much more comfortable from the cars I’ve ever own. Since the car’s front hood is so long, I am guessing the Mercedes logo in front of the car is a good indicator about the length of the car’s front end, if not you’ll be kissing the bumper the car in front of you. The interior is roomy however, I seem to have trouble with the air conditioning being too cold. This car is has automatic transmission so driving short or long distance is a breeze to drive. Other than that, the raw engine power and the driving experience better than the Proton I’ve been so used to.

Interior view of the Mercedes 230E

The downside of having such a big car is the always, the fuel consumption and more money for both parts and car services. My Proton Iswara only consume around 15 – 17 cent a kilometer of fuel while the Mercedes would be using 20 – 24 cent a kilometer of fuel. That would translate to an extra RM15 – RM25 of fuel in a week since I drive to work almost 500km per week. If fuel consumption is not a problem, I would definitely keep this car for it continental driving experience. It reminded me of the old Volvo 240GL my father handed over to me when I was studying my Diploma in Mechanical (Automotive) Engineering.

I’m not a big fan of old cars anymore, therefore I would settle for a new car once I’ve finished off my car loan 2 more years to come.

Today I want to show you something interesting I saw a couple of month ago. I’ve never seen such creativity and such an awesome inspiration or motivation. When I first saw this, I was flabbergasted (loved this word):

Behold!

Mercedes Benz E-Class Little Brother

Check out what it says at the rear end of the car:

Don’t you think this is amusing? Well I do.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something about cars. On my way back from Terengganu, my family and I stop over at one of my cousin’s house somewhere in Paka. While waiting for lunch to be served, I spent some time flipping through a few stacks of magazines. My cousin is a big fan of compact car. He converted his Kancil into a Mira. While I like things to remain exactly what they are, I do admire his enthusiasm to customize his car.

K-Kompak Magazine

My cousin’s car doesn’t look like the above picture. Flipping through the magazine a little bit more, I found this article.

Kelisa Club.com 2nd Anniversary

The magazine is already a year old but look who I found:

LadyAzurt and her friend

LadyAzurt is a blogger friend of mine (I’ve never met her in person yet). She was actively blogging before her lately seldom posting on her blog. A lot of her recent blog posting is more towards channeling her frustration from my opinion. Not that I’m criticizing her writings. I think she needs some cheering up and stop focusing on bad things in her line of work. Maybe what she can do is to cherish her fun moment by looking at fun and exciting activities she has done.

Anyway, I would buy a compact car if I could trade-in my red Iswara for a less monthly installment of what I am paying right now. Enjoy this piece of video review of the Perodua Kelisa done by Top Gear:

It seems that I’m clocking my car’s odometer a little bit sooner than I should. With the amount of traveling that I’m doing everyday, I would have to service my car at least once every 2 months instead of 3 months. There is one way to avoid this, move nearer to my office which is located about 40km from my house in KL.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Kepong where I used to go and service my car. I had noticed one of Fasfik’s service workshop in Sri Serdang had been closed for quite some time. I would have never thought Fasfik Kepong would have gone to the same process.

Fasfik Kepong Closed (August 2008)

It’s a pity that such a nice location and a nice facility needed to be closed down. I suspect Fasfik is having a scaling issues whereby they tried to go big very quickly but find out that they are incapable of supplying enough resources. In businesses, there is always risk to be taken therefore I guess Fasfik would really have to make a decision whether to move forward and overcome their obstacles or just sell off their business like what Projet (Now being bought over by Shell) did.

I am quite sad to see them closed down however, my car needs to be serviced one way or the other. A few meters away from where Fasfik is located, is another service workshop. They’re currently having a promotion but it is only for old cars. Their normal package for my car starts at RM98 but I ended up paying RM178 because of other parts of my car that is slowly deteriorating. I should have brought my laptop because there’s free Wi-Fi while waiting in the customer’s waiting lounge.

AutoCare & Tyre (ACT) with Free Wi-Fi Available

This ACT Workshop is Very Clean

The service was quite fast. In less than an hour, my car was serviced and running smoothly again. Now isn’t that money well spent? So much of me being so thrifty.