Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Back in April I took a look at a rare FIA homologation special not too many people know about – the 450SLC 5.0:
The 107.026s were very limited production cars, with a total of under 3,000 produced in all (1,636 450SLC 5.0s, along with 1,133 500SLCs manufactured in 1980 and 1981). So it’s really neat to see them come up for sale – even when they’re not in perfect shape. Today’s car will need a lot of love to get back to its glorious roots, but is it worth it to do so?
This W140 sold for $13,600 on November 17, 2021.
I still think the W140 Mercedes-Benz S-Class is occupying that no man’s land area where it isn’t old enough to be a full on classic, but certainly not new enough where original owner’s still are using them. When you look up 1990s styling, this is very much it, and maybe this isn’t a good thing. On the other hand, if you wanted to daily drive one, you certainly could as long as your wiring harness hasn’t turned to dust on the pre-facelift models. We are seeing the really nice Grand Edition and V12 cars sell for serious money, but the rest of the model line up seems to lag behind significantly.
Today’s example, a 1992 500SEL up for sale in Chicago looks like your typical early build, but shows an impressively low 25,000 miles. Even better? It’s Malachite Green Metallic.
The jump from the W124 Mercedes-Benz E-Class to the next generation W210 was a large one. Gone was the slab sided bodies and square headlines and in was a much more soft design with quad round headlights. Inside, the W210 still behaved like a Mercedes from years past, but they made sure to carry over that roundness and a whole bunch of more plastic. Under the hood, a traditional V6 took the place of the trusty inline-six midway through the model run of the E320, and a workhorse it was. Today example, a 2000 E320 up for sale in Florida, is a great example of that. Why? Well, it has almost 300,000 miles on the odometer.
Today I wanted to look at a 2016 Mercedes-Benz … SL400? Yes, that is a thing. Back in 2015, Mercedes-Benz introduced the SL400 with a 329 horsepower 3.0L twin-turbo V6 paired with a the 722.9 seven-speed automatic. The whole reason for this is that the base price was $85,000, which meant it was $23,000 less than the SL550. For legacy SL buyers, that is a big deal. You still get your SL with all the toys, but save a bunch of money if you don’t ever use 430 horsepower. This was true in a lot of households as these cars are used as Sunday cruisers and rarely get full throttle. A win-win for both Mercedes and buyers as more cars were sold and buyers save a little bit of coin. Now five years later, these could be a bargain, right?
Some cars are all bark and no bite, while some are both, and very few are the opposite. If you were Mercedes-Benz in the 1990s, you weren’t concerned about being flashy and letting the world know what you were packing. Even more so when it came to then-small tuning arm AMG and their subsidies around the globe. Sure, you could order some different body work from them, but looking back now, it is extremely constrained compared to what we are used to as normal now. Today, we have a seemingly innocent S500 up for sale in Japan, although the multi-piece wheels and tiny little trunk badge is a little bit of a giveaway that this isn’t a normal S500.
