Graphite Ghost, thanks for the suggestion on the access port manual override, but I couldn't find that port on the shift mechanism to try your tip. I finally became tired of my 05 Crossfire sitting in the driveway, because I could only start the engine and go forward into a wall that was in front of the car. Since I could still put the transmission in neutral, I had the car towed backwards (it was facing a downward incline, so several of us could not push it backwards) into the street. Once the car was in the street from my driveway, I could start the car and go forward, so I carefully drove it about 25 miles up to my very experienced Mercedes mechanic to see what he could figure out. After sitting a week at his shop, until he had time to look into the problem, I decided to swing by the shop and check on his progress.

Apparently his Mercedes factory diagnostic tool needed some sort of software update from Mercedes to work on the older R170 SLK model that the Crossfire is based on and he was going to be delayed for several more days, so I decided to try driving the car forward again to see if the same problem was still there in not being able to put the car in Reverse or Park. To my amazement, the car started right up and the transmission could be shifted into Reverse as well as Neutral, Park and Forward. Before notifying the forum of the mystery "fix", I decided to drive the car normally for several hundred miles in all gears to make certain the problem did not happen again. I am happy to report now that my low mileage (20K miles) 05 Crossfire Convertible is back on the road, with no repairs needed to be fully functional again. My Mercedes guy and I are both puzzled as to what happened; he has 45 plus years of Mercedes experience, so he is by no means a rookie on these R170-based cars. Do any forum members have any ideas on what might have happened to my Crossfire?? Thanks in advance.