Oh boy. Everyone loves a good project, right?
This poor 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 needs some help. Well, a lot help. Looking at the photos, I don’t know if it is worth saving. To make it short, the paint is totally gone, the suspension is sagging, there is rust in the trunk, and the interior is one step short of fire damage. But hey, at least it runs. Right? (Checks notes to see if it does actually run)
If you’re looking for ‘bang for your buck’, Porsche probably isn’t going to be your brand. You pay a lot for Porsches compared to equivalent vehicles from other brands, but on the other hand you do get a that badge. How much value that brings is naturally up to you. You could argue that it is worth it in many cases, but sometimes the numbers don’t lie.
If you want to start entry level, the 718 chassis is going to be launching point in the low $60,000 range; the base 911 is $40,000 more. However, buying a 718 for that $60,000 and change is nearly impossible given the options and how quickly they add up, and the dealer probably won’t order you one unless you are the best customer they have. The solution? Looks in the used market and hope something turns up. That is what we have today in a 2019 Cayman that had an MSRP of $73,000. Three years and 20,000 miles later? Well, I bet the used car discount isn’t going to seem as much as you’d think.
If there is one thing I love, it is one-off examples of cars with a bunch of things I never knew existed or didn’t even know were possible to order.
This 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera was built for Tilman Brodbeck, assistant to then-Porsche CEO Peter Schutz. The story goes that the car had so many unique features and touches that it was physically pulled off the assembly line and painted at a special off-site facility before returning to Porsche, where it was fitted with one of the craziest interiors I’ve come across. Just wait until you see the details on this thing.
Always do your research and read. That is one of the most important aspects of buying a used car, along with asking enough questions to cover all your bases. Even if everything seems okay at first, keep reading and asking questions. Otherwise, one might end up in a situation like today with this 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera S.
This car checks all the boxes on the surface. It’s a C2S in Guards Red with 18″ Turbo Twist wheels and just under 40,000 miles. There’s no surprise that means there is also a big price tag. But there is one big problem that shouldn’t be overlooked here: the title.
Not that they weren’t valuable before, but it certainly seems like collectors or “want-to-be collectors” are trying to grab every little piece of pre-merger AMG stuff they can get their hands on. The thing is, no one really knows what is all out there and where they are at. Being that they were produced à la carte-style at several different AMG subsidies around the world and record keeping was rather sparse, tracking these cars is difficult at best, and the possibilities were endless in terms of how tame or how crazy you wanted to go. One car might get some bumpers and side skirts, while the one being built beside it might get widebody treatment and a 6.0-liter swap. Once they were finished, off they went to who-knows-where.
Today’s car, a 1992 300CE, is somewhere in the middle. It has the classic AMG bodykit, Monoblock wheels, and an M103 with bumped-up displacement to 3.4 liters. Sadly there is no 6.0 here, but surely it is a great looking automobile and still can be fun. This one is up for sale in central Paris of all places has a fair amount of miles, and is priced somewhat reasonably considering what we saw another 3.4 car sell for back in May.
Some days you just don’t know what you are going to stumble across. This is one of those days. What we are looking at is a 1994 Mercedes-Benz S320 that has been converted to a hearse. Now believe it or not, this is not the first time I’ve looked at an S-Class hearse, as there was a 560SEL I checked out way back in 2018. That one was setup for Japanese Buddhists, while this W140 seems to be more of a traditional hearse without the scaled down Temple constructed on it. However, judging by the decor and stickers on the car, this most certainly also came from Japan where it saw some use. Cool! But what would you even do with it?
Brown cars are a funny thing. If you told someone that out of all the colors you could order a car you chose the shade the UPS man prefers, they’d probably call you nuts. However, in some cases after you see it, the results are pretty good. Of course this totally depends on what car we are talking about, but manufacturers have gotten pretty good at mixing that perfect shade that isn’t ugly or offensive. Case in point; Anthracite Brown Metallic on a Porsche 911. It very much has the strong presence of Anthracite in it, but still surely won’t be mistaken for anything but brown. Naturally, you need an interior color to match when you go all-in with the brown, so you’ll not find carbon fiber or deviated green stitching here. Lets check it out.
The introduction of the W208 Mercedes-Benz CLK-Class was a little bit of a shock if you were coming from a W124 E-Class coupe. Suddenly everything that was square was now round, and the interior felt….well, a little less quality. I’m sure Mercedes had some kind of spin about how it was modernizing it for the new millennium, but there was no mistaking the difference. You also were swapping a smooth inline-six for a squared-off V6, which I’m sure buyers didn’t really notice the difference of – as long as it started every morning. I think time gave us the answer as really nice E320 Coupes sell for strong money, while the best CLK320 examples, like the one we have today, won’t even sell for half that value.
One of the more surprising stories in the niche car market is that basically every used second-generation W463 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen is selling for way over sticker price. I am not underplaying it by saying “way over” sticker price: a new G63 AMG starts at $156,000, but these are now hitting the market for $225,000 even with a bunch of miles. Blame it on a bunch of factors, but basically the modest factory in Graz, Austria just can’t build them fast enough. Almost every market in the world wants them, and there’s apparently enough money and demand to outstrip production. It is a far cry from just 15 years ago, when Mercedes sold just 587 examples for the entire model year in the US.
This 2021 up for sale in Florida has 5,700 miles already accrued, and it is already on to its second owner. But the price? Well, you guessed it.
The Porsche 911 Targa is one of those true ‘have your cake and eat it too’ cars that has been carrying on for a few decades now. After all, it was created to answer the rumor that the US was going to ban the sale of convertible cars due to safety reasons, but Porsche, and most importantly their customers, still wanted open-air motoring. What started as a simple removable roof panel transformed into a piece of sliding glass over generations, and now we have an extremely complex folding roof mechanism that you pray never has a fault with it. Still, when it works, it is amazing. So what do you say – are you a Targa fan or not?
