America Wasn’t Cool Enough To Get Mercedes-Benz’s Cutest Car, But You Can Buy One Without Paying Tariffs

The world is full of fun cars that Americans never officially got access to. Japanese Domestic Market cars tend to get all of the attention, but Europe had great cars, too. One of them is the original Mercedes-Benz A-Class, which is easily the cutest car to wear the three-pointed star. America wasn’t cool enough to these adorable city cars, but enough time has passed, and that’s not a problem anymore. A beautiful A-Class has shown up for sale right here in America, and it appears to be in solid shape.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the car import world right now. The federal government has placed reciprocal tariffs on goods coming from anywhere in the world, with some countries getting higher tariff percentages than others. Then there are the tariffs on specific goods and materials. It’s easy to develop a headache trying to figure out how much Uncle Sam wants you to cough up. If you asked five different Customs brokers about what tariffs you’d have to pay on your import, you’d probably get five different answers. I only know because I have asked different brokers the same questions and got different answers. You may even get a bill if the government decides that you didn’t pay enough.

It’s for this reason that I stopped importing cars. I would love to add an Audi A2, a Smart City Coupe, or a Mercedes-Benz A-Class to my fleet, but it’s hard to figure out what my final cost will be. If you find yourself in the same situation, maybe the solution would be to buy a car that’s already here and titled. That way, the headache of tariffs is someone else’s problem.

That’s the opportunity being offered by the 1998 Mercedes-Benz A160 Avantgarde that’s up for grabs in Tennessee right now. It’s a car that’s here, titled, and ready to go. Even better, this bright red city car is left-hand drive and comes with an automated manual transmission.

A Real Car, Only Tiny

As Automotive World reports, the creation of the A-Class was a part of a wider initiative within Mercedes-Benz. The company was interested in expanding into markets it hadn’t previously explored. Mercedes entered the highly lucrative SUV market with the ML, and began catering to “lifestyle” buyers with the SLK Roadster.

The A-Class served a couple of roles. It would add an entry-level vehicle to the Mercedes portfolio while also adding a Mercedes product to the market of trendy city cars. Mercedes had long been interested in city cars and had even created prior concepts like the gloriously blocky NAFA. Of course, Mercedes would also join in on the Swatch car project, which would later become the Smart.

Mercedes-Benz says the A-Class made its first appearance at the motor show in Frankfurt as the Vision A 93. This car was more than just a design study, but represented an upcoming production model. The automaker says the Vision A 93 gained instant worldwide curiosity.

One of the design themes behind the A-Class was to do what hadn’t been done before. In Mercedes’s eyes, existing city cars made poor use of their available space or weren’t particularly safe. The A-Class was designed to show that tiny cars can have large interiors and that they could be just as safe as larger vehicles.

This goal meant that Mercedes-Benz wasn’t able to use an existing platform. Mercedes-Benz created a platform that utilized two horizontal planes. The passenger cell was placed on the upper plane while the mechanical parts up lived front and on the lower plane. In a frontal crash, this “sandwich” design allowed for the powertrain to slide down and out of the way of the passenger cell.

Mercedes-Benz continues:

In the new model series over 20 technical innovations were implemented which had not hitherto existed in this product category. Thanks to the unique sandwich principle, the A‑Class delivered the spatial comfort and safety standards of a mid-range saloon. The innovative rear seats and the option of a removable front passenger seat offered the adaptability of a mini MPV and allowed the five-seater vehicle to be transformed into a four, three, two or one-seater. In total, there were 72 potential seat variations. The A‑Class could also rival large estates in terms of load capacity, offering 390 to 1340 litres, depending on the position of the rear seats, or, with the front passenger seat removed, an impressive 1740 litres. The flat floor, large tailgate and low load compartment sill made loading easy.

The robust floor assembly with its combination of straight longitudinal members and cross members was an integral part of the innovative safety concept. At the front end of the longitudinal members was a novel front module made of aluminium, with two lateral crash boxes. These were bolted to the longitudinal members and could be replaced quickly and relatively cheaply in the event of an accident. For the first time in large-scale production at Mercedes‑Benz, a plastic was used for the front wings which quickly resumed its original form following a minor collision, without the need for repairs or paintwork. To save weight, the tailgate was also made from plastic. The easy-to-repair design of the A‑Class not only reduced repair costs following an accident, but also resulted in low comprehensive insurance costs.

In terms of passive safety, the new model series achieved practically the same level as the exemplary model series 210 E‑Class. Besides the unique sandwich principle, the restraint systems installed as standard and specially adapted to the A‑Class concept with its short crumple zones contributed to this result. They included full-size airbags for the driver and front passenger, automatic seat belts, with belt tensioners on the front and outer rear seats, and belt force limiters on the front seats.

Mercedes-Benz would apply similar safety logic to the Smart City Coupe, which was also under development in the 1990s.

The automaker says it also had to engineer a new series of engines and transmissions to fit into the A-Class since the area taken up by the drivetrain was so small. The new engines had alloy blocks and were reportedly 25 percent lighter than other four-cylinder engines in their class. Mercedes-Benz would mount what it called the “drive unit” at an angle below the pedal box so that the interior could be as large as possible without the drivetrain getting in the way. Apparently, Mercedes even had to give the A-Class specific transmissions that formed around the bodywork of the vehicle.

The suspension was also chosen for its compactness. Mercedes says it went with MacPherson strut assemblies and a torsion-bar stabilizer up front, plus a trailing-arm suspension and coil springs in the rear. The A-Class even got crafty with emergencies, as the standard model eschewed a spare tire for sealant and an air pump. However, a real spare tire was available upon request.

A Rocky Start

The A-Class was introduced in 1997, and Mercedes produced barely more than 2,500 copies when a total public relations disaster occurred.

Unfortunately, as Hagerty UK writes, while Mercedes made some engineering triumphs with the A-Class, it was also half-baked in areas. The most infamous example of Mercedes’ folly was when Swedish journalist Robert Collin performed his ‘elk test’ with an A-Class. All the vehicle had to do was swerve around an obstacle, as one might do if an animal appeared in the road ahead of your vehicle. The A-Class tried and failed, rolling rather than completing the test.

The failure was an embarrassment for Mercedes-Benz, which initially denied the existence of an issue before stopping sales for three months. When the A-Class came back onto the scene, it had a modified suspension and stability control. The car sacrificed handling to keep all of its wheels firmly planted. That was enough to get it to pass the elk test (above). The A-Class also managed to impress car journalists and attracted plenty of customers.

Unfortunately, the woes did not end, from Hagerty UK:

The iceberg of woes was tipped with keyfobs and alarm systems that didn’t work. Moving down to terrible wipers (and no repositioning for right-hand drive) that required a total recall in 2005, and electronic malfunctions including sunroofs. Suspension, anti-roll bars, steering and fuel pipes all have reported issues. And right down at the frozen fundamentals level are infamous problems with diesel ignition and faulty transmissions that frequently resulted in a rebuild/replacement bill larger than the value of the rest of the car.

Poor A-Class. It didn’t turn out at all well, really. It certainly transformed Mercedes’ fortunes. But not in a good way, because the company is said to have lost 2.5bn Euros on the project despite selling 1.1m of them, making it probably the best-selling bad car of all time. And yet with a delicious irony, its litany of misbehaviours did not include safety. Assuming it could be worked over enough in the service bay so the engine could actually maintain acceleration, the brakes work properly, and the car’s vim not be extinguished by driving through a deep puddle (thereby waterboarding the low-hanging power steering pump), the original A-Class would look after you.

The A-Class and the first-generation Smart Fortwo were similar in a low of ways. They both were both tiny, surprisingly safe cars that were temperamental. Both of these cars also sold in healthy numbers, yet still cost their manufacturers piles of money, anyway. It didn’t help that the cheapest A-Class, the A160, had an expensive starting price of £15,490 in 1998, and the price climbed quickly from there.

But all of these events transpired more than two decades ago. The world has moved on from cars like the original A-Class. As it stands right now, it’s not very hard to find an old, imperfect A-Class with some miles on its odometer and a price under $2,000. Some of these cars are finding new life by coming to America. A handful of model years of the A-Class are legal to import, and some people are going through the work to bring them here.

This Mercedes-Benz A-Class

One of those cars is this 1998 Mercedes-Benz A160 Avantgarde. It’s currently for sale in Tennessee, and it appears to be in pretty good shape. Mercedes says that the original A-Class was sold in three trim levels:

Three variants – CLASSIC, ELEGANCE and AVANTGARDE – were available, all of which came with a comprehensive assortment of standard equipment. Compared with the basic CLASSIC version, the ELEGANCE variant offered a range of additional interior and exterior features. These included light-alloy wheels, a radiator grille and exterior mirrors painted in vehicle colour, chrome inlays in the door handles and two-tone tail light lenses. The AVANTGARDE was the advanced-technology model variant, featuring light-alloy wheels with wide-base tyres, a silver-painted radiator grille, exterior mirrors in vehicle colour and single-tone tail light lenses.

This one is the Avantgarde, and it features the bits noted above, plus air-conditioning, hybrid cloth and leather seats, power steering, front power windows, and power mirrors. Power reaches the front wheels from a 1.6-liter M166 four-cylinder with 101 HP and 111 lb-ft of torque on tap. The transmission is a curious oddity, as the original owner didn’t opt for a regular automatic or manual, and instead got a manual transmission with an automatic clutch. The driver still moves the gear shifter through the five gears with an H-pattern shifter, but an electric motor handles clutch duties.

The A-Class is also properly quirky. The rear windows have cranks, the dashboard is wavy, and the seats aren’t much thicker than what you’d find in a city bus. But the car also shows some wear, especially on the steering wheel, but otherwise looks pretty clean for a vehicle with 110,282 miles.

The car even comes with a short story about how it got here. The seller says he often travels to Europe and has a knack for buying cars from private owners and then bringing them to America. Sure enough, his Facebook Marketplace page is full of totally normal European cars that he brought to America.

Before you pull the trigger on a car like this, you should be aware of what you’re getting into. Yes, this is a Mercedes-Benz, but it’s also still a city car at heart. This won’t be super quiet, super comfortable, or that great of an American road-trip car. Think of this as something like a four-door Smart Fortwo and then adjust your expectations accordingly. Even Doug DeMuro learned the hard way that an early Mercedes A-Class might not be what you’d expect.

Really, this A-Class might be great for the kind of person who might be interested in a Japanese Kei class car, but might want a little more space, a little more speed, left-hand drive, and a little more power. This can also be a decent pick for someone who lives in a state that doesn’t like Keis. This car is bigger than a Kei and has a 17-digit VIN, so you’ll probably slide right under the radar. Of course, be sure to check local rules on emissions testing and such.

The price also seems reasonable. The seller wants $9,500 for this car. Yes, that price is more than you’d pay if you imported one of these yourself. However, you’ll likely have to pay a vehicle sourcing agent, two shippers, a broker, and then tariffs. Or you can fly to Europe and do the transaction yourself for less money. Based on quotes I’ve gotten to have someone find me a cheap European car and then have it imported, going your own way might save a couple of grand or so. Paying extra might be worth bypassing the hassle.

Honestly, I’m just stoked to see another Mercedes-Benz A160 in America. I get that importing cars from Japan is crazy easy, it’s why I do it. But I’d love to see more cars from other parts of the world coming to America. Sure, the Mercedes A160 is small, weird, and will probably test your patience. But look at the thing! How can you say no to cuteness like that?