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When the W126 S-class first appeared in the US in the early 80s, the most powerful gasoline model available, the 380SEL, proved a bit of a disappointment. The 3.8 liter V8 engine produced a relatively paltry 155 hp, prompting wealthy American buyers to go to the trouble of importing the more powerful 500SEL from Europe. These cars, initially unavailable in the US, were powered by a 5.0 liter V8 which produced a much more respectable 240 hp. In fact, the gray market demand for the 500SEL turned out to be so strong that ultimately Mercedes-Benz of North America relented, and began officially bringing them to the US from 1984-85 (in 1986 they were phased out in favor of the 560SEL). Still, Euro 500s remained an attractive proposition: making roughly about the same power as the US 560s, they had slimmer bumpers and more attractive glass headlights. That may explain why this ’86 Euro-spec model was imported to the US in 1987, by a high-level German banker no less.
We originally featured this 2006 Mercedes-Benz E55 Estate back in May of 2013 from our friends at EuroWerkz. This car has boomeranged to them with a little bit more miles but presenting just as great as it always has. The E55 AMG Estate needs no introduction here at GCFSB. It’s remarkable that Mercedes-Benz still offers a go-fast E-class Estate in a marketplace that demands vanilla offerings at every turn. But they have bravely carried on through the years, offering this bonkers five-door to us for a decade now. Along with the Geländewagen and AMG GT, this populates the cool corner of the current Mercedes lineup. However, not everyone has around $100,000 to spend on a new family speed machine. This E55 AMG offers a solution around that fiscal sticking point.
I’m not afraid to say that the W203 is my one of my least favorite Mercedes ever made. The design was soft, the entire interior was a plastic mess and even the wheel design sucked. These were geared towards entry-level buyers and the lease deals on them were targeted towards anyone who had a pulse and a solid proof of couch ownership with coins under the cushions. This left us with a mass sea of used W203s for sale that you can pick up for mere peanuts. Seriously, I think some buyers on Craigslist are accepting bags of peanuts to take away their 2001 C240s. But one model out of all the miserable cars stood out and actually was worth driving and hey, maybe even buying. Allow me to reintroduce the C55 AMG.
Unless you buy a new car, you seem to always take some risk as to how a car has been treated, what kind of maintenance it has had and most importantly what kind of service it’s going to give you once you take ownership. Sometimes these risks are small but a lot of times, especially in the case of used German cars, it is a lot of risk if you are spending more than a few thousand dollars. Even with dealer maintained cars, technicians sometimes rush through jobs or lack the attention to detail just to get the car off their rack and move on to else to keep those hours moving. Today’s car has a seller that puts that risk at the very low end of the scale when buying a 26 year-old expensive German car. Enter Kent Bergsma:
As some readers will know, while I toyed with the idea of replacing my W201 with another old Mercedes for daily driving duties, on a whim I went with a similar era BMW instead. My E34 is a fine car, but I really miss driving a Benz. For that reason I like to torture myself by browsing them online. Lately, I’ve been obsessed by the W126. There’s one always parked outside my apartment building in DC. It has rust, faded paint, a broken bumper and a broken headlight. You could say it’s pretty beaten up. And yet, I’m still charmed by it every time I see it. I often think about buying one myself. At the moment I have a very long commute, which rules out the V8s on grounds of fuel economy. The diesels have their own problems, leaving the 300SE/SEL. I wouldn’t exactly call these “frugal,” but they do offer the best fuel economy in the W126 without going down the diesel route.
