mercs are a bit of a no no, as u say most are autos and manuals are pretty rare, but then the issue is the manual boxes in mercs just shit themselves lol

e36 bmw with a 325 lump is a pretty cheap entry level drifter these days, its just that even the price of these has gone up massively due to drifters. still relatively cheap, but not as cheap as they were a while back! the main plus side is, if u spank it and destroy it, u still have the 325 lump n transmission, so u just transfer that into a much cheaper n easier to find 316 or sumthin n start over again