By now we’re used to the idea that flagship, luxury sedans should look like bloated warships, with bulbous styling, semi-autonomous aids to insulate the driver from driving, and triple-glazed windows to insulate plutocratic passengers from the hoi polloi outside. But once upon a time, top of the range cars were simpler, crisper and cleaner in their appearance and design and much more involving to drive. Luxurious, yes, but swollen, no. For this reason I’ve always had a soft spot for the E23 generation 7-series, now near forgotten, especially since so few of them remain on the road and so many of them now rot in junkyards. This one is a nice looking survivor. It also comes with an added bonus: a donor car with a manual gearbox, ready for a swap.
Month: November 2016
I’m becoming consistently divergent in my features of the 996 Turbo as this post marks the third straight (I think?) example that centers more upon potential long-term value than on performance value. Not that these aren’t still a really nice performance value, but you get the idea. Here we have an Arctic Silver Metallic 2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S Coupe, located in California, with only 12,545 miles on it and the very desirable 6-speed manual transmission. This car makes for a pretty interesting comparison with the very low mileage 2003 X50-equipped 911 Turbo we featured in October. Seemingly identical colors and condition and both with quite low mileage. This Turbo S comes in at a slightly higher price so the question, naturally, is whether the particular rarity of the S makes those extra dollars worthwhile. I suspect it will, but we’ll have to see.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S Coupe on Hemmings Motor News
1 Comment
“It’s more than just a car, it’s a glimpse into the future”. That’s what Jeremy Clarkson said about the W221 S-Class when he first drove one back in 2006. He wasn’t lying. The S-Class has always been the peek into what’s to come for regular consumer cars 10 years later. Options like Brake Assist, Active Blind Spot Assist and a list of other things were standard in the S-Class in 2007 are now part of the marketing campaign touting such features for companies like Subaru. Now if you wanted all these futuristic tech in your car and wanted it paired to a twin-turbo V12 just because…well, why not, you look no further than the S600.
CLICK FOR DETAILS:Â 2007 Mercedes-Benz S600 on eBay
2 Comments
The Audi Quattro was not nearly as dominant in World Rally as pretty much every article you read says it was. That may sound shocking, but in the years the Quattro “dominated” the WRC, it only won the driver’s and constructor’s championship together one time – in 1984. In 1983, Hannu Mikkola won the driver’s title in a Quattro, but the constructor win went to – wait for it – a rear-drive Lancia 037. In 1982, Audi’s design won the constructor’s championship, but again it was rear-driver Walter Röhrl in an Opel Ascona that captured the driver’s title. Those shortened, screaming, flame-belching bewinged monsters you’ve seen on numerous clips? Well, the truth is they were never very successful, as the much better balanced Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 swept the end of the Group B period up. If you want real dominance in that era, though, you need to look at the Lancia Delta Integrale, which captured every title from 1987 to 1992.
But the Quattro was evocative. The sound was memorizing. And even if the recipe was perfected by other makes later, it was Audi’s design that revolutionized the sport with unfathomable speed and aggression. So compelling was the Quattro, that long after Audi had retired from Rally and was now dominating race tracks, plenty of enthusiasts were trying to recreate the magic on their own:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1983 Audi Quattro on eBay
1 Comment
Bonkers.
That’s what the engineers at Mercedes-Benz went on the W220, apparently. They were not content with already have a very potent sedan in the supercharged S55 AMG (which featured the same supercharged M113 as yesterday’s E55 by the end of the run, but kicked up to 493 horsepower) or the ultra-luxurious S600 that had a 5.5 liter twin-turbocharged V12 that made the same horsepower as the S55 but even a bit more torque.
So, they combined them in 2005.
The result was the S65 AMG, which with the punched out M275-AMG 6.0 liter twin-turbocharged V12 produced a simply outlandish 604 horsepower and 738 lb.ft of torque. That was enough to propel this 5,000 pound sedan from 0-60 in 4.2 seconds. And while that sounds really quick (and IS really quick), that was not where the S65 excelled at accelerating. It was really on the fly that the numbers started to tumble as the speedometer rose; a quarter mile was dispatched in 12 seconds. No fancy launch program, no trick dual-clutch gearbox, not even really enough tire to transfer that power to the road despite the massive 275-35-19 treads in the rear. This was just pure, unadulterated Victorian-era power. The real number that stands out isn’t the top speed, because like all other sensible German sedans from the time period it was maxed at 155 m.p.h., but how quickly it got there: 21 seconds – 2.3 seconds ahead of a Ferrari 575. If you’re counting, that was about the same amount of time it took an early 1980s Volkswagen diesel to hit 60. And you were able to achieve this speed in what was effectively a modern Swiss chalet, comfortable, quiet and full of all the modern technical features you’d expect from the automotive equivalent of a Brookstone catalogue. But it was expensive, topping $180,000 before the few options you could select – yet today, these physics-defying super executives can be purchased by mere mortals: