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We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.
As we are now into a new decade, I figured now is a good a time as any to remind you to never buy the car I’m looking at today. What is it? The 2001 Mercedes-Benz S600. Not just the 2001, but any vehicle that comes with one of the worst engines ever made, the M137. This engine was so bad, that it only lasted three model years the US spanning from 2000-2002 in the S600 and CL600. Mercedes quickly admitted their errors and switched to the M275 in 2003, and that was so durable that iterations of it are still in production today. Why exactly was this thing so bad? Lets refresh our memory.
I have to hand it to Porsche, they really nailed it when it came to their GTS trim line on the 911. It slotted in perfectly between the S and GT cars for those buyers who wanted more, but didn’t want to pay GT prices or live with the harshness they can dish out. When they launched the 991.2 C4 GTS, it sure seemed like it was knocking on the door of the GT3. The new twin-turbo 3.0L with the PDK gearbox could whip it to 60 mph is just 3.3 seconds. That is just .1 second slower than the 991.1 GT3. Seems like a heck of a value at a $135,000 base price back when these were new. Even better, you could get it with the 7-speed manual gearbox. What isn’t to like?
Continuing on my run of interesting 996 Porsche 911 Turbo cars, I came across a very nice example up for sale in New York finished in Carrara White. Not only is it in a desirable color in my eyes, but of course it has a bunch of extra goodies like the aero kit, sport seats, matching center console and gauges, and the always desirable X50 powerkit. However, there is one big problem for some. The same problem as the Miami Blue 997 I looked out last week.
Oh, Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG, what have you done this time? When this 2016 first caught my eye, I thought it was a gaudy vinyl wrap installed by some shop that took up residence in some old garage six months ago. However, this isn’t a vinyl wrap, this is paint straight from Mercedes-Benz. The color is called designo Desert Sand, and I give them credit, this looks like desert sand. To go even further, it has a matching desert sand interior, and they didn’t go lightly on that either. As wild as it is, the previous generation is now old news with the new G terrorizing curbs at the local mall in the nice end of town. So what happens to the values of this crazy AMG G-Wagens? Well for this specific example, it might be a little different.
The 964 Porsche 911 RS America has all the ingredients of being a highly coveted 911 with its low production run, driver-focused options (or lack there of), and clout for wearing an RS badge. Prices have reflected that with some examples hitting $150,000 for the absolute best ones you can find, but on the other end of the price range you could argue that it is really good value. Never one to overpay for something, I wanted to look at this 1993 up for sale in Florida that has a few modifications, and which also has over 81,000 miles. As track-focused as these were, many buyers keep these as the weekend toy that doesn’t move much, so seeing one with that many miles is a little bit of a surprise to me. Is the buy in worth it given the above average miles? I’ll at least try to make some sense of it.
