Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Perhaps we should have designated this Mercedes-Benz E class week? First a clean, low mileage W210 E320 on Monday and then a rare 300TE 4Matic featured yesterday. Now we have this low mileage 1994 E320 sedan for sale in Philadelphia. This one looks exceptionally sharp in Midnight Blue and has only covered 66,000 miles.
After Audi turned the automotive world on its ear in the early 1980s with Quattro four-wheel drive, other automakers were quick to cash in on the craze. Mercedes-Benz tested the waters with four-wheel drive in passenger cars by way of their 4Matic system. Introduced in the W124 E class sedan and estate, it gave buyers in climates with less than favorable weather the option of using these cruisers year round. You don’t see a lot of these early 4Matics around these days, making this black 300TE for sale in Michigan a neat find.
Performance figures. Manufacturers agonize and boast about them. Enthusiasts taunt others with claimed 0-60 times, top speeds and lateral grip. What’s often lost is that seldom are these figures truly achievable in the real world, and that the really impressive feature – especially amongst super cars – is that these cars need to perform incredibly, but then to also start every time, be reliable, comfortable, and have a warranty. Take for example the blistering Veyron; you can poo-poo it’s heady top speed and Saturn V-esque acceleration, but as a feat of engineering alone it’s magnificent. Top that performance with a car that most of the time can be driven like an Audi A8 – up to and including in snow – and it’s simply mind boggling the amount of constraints that were placed on the engineering squad that produced it. Of course, throw those constraints out the window and the performance level of the Veyron is suddenly approachable or in some cases can be surpassed, even by a one-off from a small tuning firm. Such is the case with today’s car that launched a full decade ahead of the Veyron. Built by notable Porsche and Mercedes-Benz tuner Lotec for an extremely deep-pocketed individual, the C1000 pushed the performance envelope to another level. That level – a claimed 268 mph – makes it faster than nearly every supercar even today, 20 years later. Today the one and only C1000 – chassis number 1 of 1 – is available on Ebay:
As I scour through endless ads of exotica that appears here on GCFSB weekly, I still find charm in older Mercedes-Benz sedans that some folks may find a bit staid. When it was introduced for 1996, the E class took a radical turn with a front end decked out with oval headlamps, a styling hallmark that would crop up in a number of other models in the lineup over the next decade. This low mileage 1997 E320 would be the last year for the venerable M104 inline-6 motor in the E class, replaced the follow model year by the M112 V6.
Few would have seen it coming when the W124 Mercedes-Benz E class was introduced, but towards the end of the model run, the mid-sized luxury sedan got a shot in the arm by way of V8 power. While a new E class was being readied for 1996, Mercedes needed to do something to compete with the V8 heavyweights from Japan, the Lexus LS400 and Infiniti Q45. While the Lexus LS eventually went the way of the S class, the Q45 eventually died altogether, but the impression these cars from the Far East made on US consumers has been lasting. Still, there are those of us who appreciate classic German engineering even if it comes with some compromise. I would wager to say that this E420 for sale in California has aged a bit more gracefully than its Japanese competitors.