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The swan song for the R129 Mercedes-Benz SL was nothing more than a quick inventory of stuff Mercedes had laying around the warehouse in terms of parts and slapping it on a few hundred examples to call it the “Silver Arrow” special edition. We confirmed this a few weeks ago when looking at the 2000 SL320 “Edition” up for sale in the UK that was all the same parts with the exception of the white leather inserts on the seats and steering wheel. Although I’m willing to bet that leather was also sitting around on the shelf too and they need to get rid it of it before it got too dried out and dusty. However, the American market bought it up and still continues to do so as the very best examples in the world are selling for over $100,000 now and I think people are realizing these are the “it” R129s to have. Time to buy-in while you can?
One of the more interesting special editions to come out of Porsche in the last 20 years was the 2006 911 Carrera S Club Coupe. As a thank you to PCA members, or maybe a way to milk some more money (probably both), Porsche produced 50 Club Coupes only available to PCA members though a random drawing of everyone who put their name in the hat. If they were chosen, of course they still had to pay $105,000 for a Carrera S painted in exclusive Azzurro California and with a bunch of options. For comparison, a 2007 911 Turbo was around a $120,000 at the time, so this was not a cheap C2S. Seems like a bad deal, right? Well, not if you held on to it for all these years.
I love “special wishes” cars. Something about a private (probably very wealthy) individual asking a major car manufacturer to make a whole bunch of changes to a car that is already incredibility detailed is interesting to me given how dialed-in production can be. You have every car on the line have a pre-determined build process, but then have one come along and have a totally new set of specs you’ve never seen before. I’d love to see the faces of the workers at the Affalterbach factory when they were given the instructions for this 1995 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG up for sale in London.
Last week I took a look at a 2012 Mercedes-Benz S550 and the reaction was well, mixed. I totally agree that it is a nine year-old S-Class and maybe the asking price was a little high at $30,000. It probably has another $5,000 to $10,000 to go in deprecation before the bottom, so it wasn’t like you’ll be even money on it when it comes times to sell. Just for curiosity’s sake, I wanted to see what other S-Class you could snag for $30,000. Hello W222.
As the months, and now years, go on, we wait to see if the prices of 981 Porsche Cayman GT4 will finally start dropping. The 718 GT4 has been out for about six months now and judging by how many are sitting at dealers, both new and used, finding one is not difficult. So what gives? Inventory goes up, prices go down. That’s the law of supply and demand, right? Apparently Porsche GT prices apparently didn’t take that class in school.
