The Mercedes arrived on a trailer and would not move under its own power. “The car was completely dead,” Baptiste says of delivery day. It had no power, the engine would not turn on, and he found more damage than he had expected: “The subframe was bent and the gearbox was leaking oil.” Unloading it took muscle. “We had to literally drag the car off of the trailer, but the three of us managed in the end.”

Baptiste, who posts as @baptiste.cars, tells the whole build in a four and a half minute video captioned “Full Mercedes Rebuild In One Video.” He says it started with a stranger’s insult about the Vauxhall he was driving, and the comment is pinned on screen above the silver hatchback parked behind him. “I’m not gonna lie, he wasn’t wrong,” he says. By his account the Vauxhall had holes in the front bumper, a smashed windscreen, missing interior parts and mold inside.

A friend owned a Mercedes CLA, and every time Baptiste sat in it he wanted one. “To be honest, I couldn’t afford one,” he says. The only route he could see was to buy one that had been written off and repair it himself. His on screen text identifies the car as a CLA 200 from a Copart salvage auction. He says he waited many weeks for the right car, bid on many auctions and “just kept on losing” before this one came up and he won. The clip of that moment is him shouting “I won! I won!”

He started inside the cabin. “All of the seatbelts had been deployed and needed replacing, along with the passenger side curtain airbag,” he says. He did the work outdoors on his driveway in the UK, where, in his words, “it’s either pouring down with rain or we’re in the middle of a heat wave with no in between.”

The bent subframe came next. “I had no idea how I was going to do this, but all I knew was that I had to do it,” he says. Sending the car back was technically possible, he adds, “but I was never going to.” His rule for the job: “If somebody else can do it, then you definitely can do it.”

The first start came after he fitted a brand new battery and programmed the car out of crash mode. He counts down “3, 2, 1” with his foot on the brake, presses the start button and shouts “There’s no way!” when it fires. He then rebuilt the front end far enough to drive: the coolant radiators, the crash bar and the slam panel went back on. He refilled the gearbox with oil because it had leaked after the accident, and added petrol because, he says, the auction had drained the tank. The car went into gear for the first time since the crash and he drove it up and down the yard. He says people in his comments had told him it would never drive again.

All of this happened around what he calls his 9 to 5. He plays an old clip of himself arriving at work: “It’s currently 5:00am. Just got to work. So tired.” He says he was waking at 4:00am, repairing the car after his shift and editing in whatever time was left, with a one minute TikTok taking two or three hours and the YouTube videos taking days. There was a stretch when he did not see his mother for three days, “and we live in the same house.” He left the job.

The last phase was bodywork. A new bonnet and a new wing went on, then new headlights. Off camera he aligned the panels and fitted the arch liners and under trays. For the bumper he chose a CLA 45 S style part: “It would be a shame to do all this work just to put the car back to standard.” The plan he sets out is to drive it more than 900 miles from London to Spain “as a real test to see whether or not my repairs will hold up,” and he says at the end that the trip has already happened and the footage is coming.

What His Build Says About Buying a Written Off Car

Price in damage you have not seen. He says the car had more damage than he had expected once it was delivered, including a bent subframe and a leaking gearbox. Before bidding, set aside money and time for at least one structural repair and one drivetrain repair you did not plan for.

Assume the car will not start, steer or roll when it arrives. His needed a trailer and three people to unload. Book transport to your door, clear the space where it will sit for the whole job, and line up helpers for delivery day.

Cost the safety parts first. Every seatbelt in his car had deployed, a curtain airbag needed replacing, and the car would not start until it was programmed out of crash mode. Get prices for belts and airbags for the exact model, and find out who can do that programming, before you place a bid.

Check fluids before the first start and the first move. He had to refill the gearbox oil and put petrol in an empty tank.

Follow his order of work: cabin safety parts, subframe, battery and crash mode, radiators and crash bar, fluids, a short drive in the yard, and only then bonnet, wing, headlights, liners and bumper. Cosmetic panels went on after he knew the car would start and go into gear.

Be honest about the hours. He was rebuilding the car after shifts he reached by 5:00am, and he says it took his sleep and his time at home until he left the job.