Hi folks, first post.

I went to look at a 1999 C250 turbo diesel today with a view to buying it, and I'm looking for a bit of advice from someone who is familiar with this model and in particular the engine.

The car was advertised with 106,000 miles, 1 owner, my first surprise was the extent of the noise from the engine when cold, it sounded like a 40 year old Massey Fergusson with lots of knocking for the first couple of minutes, sounded like piston slap as opposed to big end kind of knocking, there was a little bit of blue smoke which cleared after a few seconds.

Is this normal for this engine?

Once warm the engine had quietened down.

The second thing that surprised me was the complete lack of power, I wasn't expecting it to be fast but I would estimate it took around 10 seconds to accelerate from 30 - 40 mph, theres obviously something not right, any ideas what it could be?

The cars being sold by a non franchised garage, the guy is going to get it to a mechanic and I'm going to go back and see it again when they've fixed the problem.

The cars fitted with an auto gearbox, are they reliable?

The cars service history stopped at 60,000 miles in 2004 which makes me wary, I would have thought that if the car was being maintained by the owner he would have at least kept the receipts for service parts.

That said the interior is in very good nick as is the body, neither suggest that the car has been clocked, in fact it was the general great condition of the car for it's age and mileage which attracted me to it in the first place.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.