Mercedes-Benz
Among the 383 Mercedes-Benz entries in the MotorJury library, the Mercedes-Benz R170 holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1996. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Mercedes-Benz R170 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Alfa Romeo Alfa Romeo 156, the Porsche Porsche Boxster, the Lotus Cars Lotus Elise — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Mercedes-Benz R170 reads like this: the record lists its engine as Petrol: / 2.0 L Mercedes-Benz M111 engine / M111.946 inline-four engine / I4 / 2.0 – 2.3 L M111 Kompressor (Mercedes-Benz) / supercharged I4 / 3.2 L Mercedes-Benz M112 engine / M11; kerb weight is recorded at 1270 -; drive goes through 5-speed Manual transmission / manual (Getrag) / 6-speed manual (Getrag) / 5-speed Mercedes-Benz 5G-Tronic transmission / 5G-Tronic Automatic transmission / automatic; the layout is Longitudinal front-engine, rear-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Mercedes-Benz's own catalogue the Mercedes-Benz R170 sits alongside the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Mercedes-Benz C124, the Mercedes-Benz C253, the Mercedes-Benz C254. The record names the successor = Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class (R171) as its predecessor and the Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class (R171) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Bruno Sacco (1991) / Michael Mauer (1993) / Murat Günak (1993). Assembly is recorded at Germany: Bremen / South Africa: East London, Eastern Cape / East London.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Mercedes-Benz R170 was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
Tap a star. Ratings are kept on your device and feed the most-loved list.
Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.