Mercedes-Benz A-Class (2005 - 2012) A150 Avantgarde SE 5d Owner Review

The car from the outside looks tiny but this thing is like a tardis. Thanks to Mercedes clever design of putting the engine under the vehicle rather than in front they've managed to keep the length of the car small, but it does have quite a lot of space. Our family of 3 and 1 dog all went on holiday with it, with the car full of kit and still had plenty of room. Prior to this we had a Zafira and whilst it's not as big as the Zafira it can still fit quite a bit in. Technology wise it's got plenty of technology in the vehicle, love all the automated systems like the headlights, windscreen wipers, it even tells you if a bulb goes and which bulb needs replacing. Only one slight downside to the vehicle is the stereo - the version I've got is the avantgarde version of the car which is the slightly higher trim than the basic. Throughout the car on the steering wheel and on the stereo there are buttons for the phone system. I thought at first oh great this must have bluetooth in the stereo for the phone - every time I pressed the phone button or looked up ways to set up the bluetooth all I got was a message on screen saying "No Phone" and at first I thought it meant that the phone hadn't been connected - however looking into it further what it actually means is "no bluetooth module" - the bluetooth module is an extra bit of kit that needs to be added to the radio to make the bluetooth work - so even though it's got all the buttons there for bluetooth there is no bluetooth - in addition to this there is also no aux input either on the stereo (that is also an optional extra!!) - I'm now looking at just replacing the stereo anyway - the good thing is it does have a space which can be converted to a double din system so can take a sat nav/MP4 player in there. The car is very cleverly designed too in the fact that all except the drivers seat can be removed which can turn it into quite a large van - the backs of the seats fold flat and the seat front can unclip and be fully removed from the vehicle, apparently even the front passenger seat can do this although I've not exactly found out how that works yet as the front seat does seem to have a side airbag system on it. Also we found that Mercedes themselves are very nice and good as we did have one slight problem with the car whilst on holiday near Conwy. The holding plate that keeps the reg plate in place on the back came lose and fell off the vehicle. Luckily we noticed it was falling off and were able to get the reg plate without losing it but we noticed all the plastic on the holding plate had worn and cracked over time which is why it fell off. We went to the Mercedes garage in Conwy and the service team very kindly found us a replacement number plate holder and even attached it to the car for us, when we asked them how much do we owe them they just said just put a donation in a charity bucket - what great service!