Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The Slate Grey Metallic 1991 Porsche 911 Turbo we featured in January remains up for sale and the price has been reduced by a little bit from $120K to $115K. I thought the original price was relatively reasonable, so as it comes down this 964 Turbo becomes just that much more appealing.
The E34 M5 may be the least-loved of the breed, but who is going to argue with a 3.9 liter stroker S38? I adore my S38B35, and the thought of a torquier, gnarlier Dinanified inline-6 with an extra pint of volume makes me tingle. This Calypso Red M5 has made the rounds, first selling on BaT in 2012 for a relative pittance before spending the last year-plus trying to spin a profit. The speculative seller has repainted it but accrued fewer than 1k miles, making clear his intentions to cash in on a rare, tuned M-car. The reality that E34s aren’t appreciating like E30s or E38s has apparently begun to set in, as he’s asking now asking $6,500 less than in 11/2014. If you’re looking for a monster E34, this is probably the way to go. But when you could be getting an E39 with 60 more horsepower and a generation newer everything, does anyone like the E34 enough to pay the premium? I’m guessing the seller is going to have to have more patience or less pride before this M5 can start spinning its wheels again with a real driver.
-NR
Who doesn’t love a clean E30 on a Friday evening? This 318is is well-traveled but “mechanically perfect” thanks to a thorough owner (now seller). It doesn’t look like a low-mile car but it looks good, with the classic red and Shadowline combo complemented by purposeful (if dorifty) bronze rims. The interior clearly shows this car is almost to the double-century, but recovered seats would make it nearly perfect. The 318is lacks the silky inline-6 but gets the most modern powerplant in the E30 family, the eager 130hp M42 inline-4 and even nimbler handling than the 325is. Clean ones are indeed hard to come by, and this one is well done.
Can the relatively-unloved E34 M5 start reaching towards the $20ks now that pretty much every other generation regularly commands more than that? We’re at a funny point in the market for every model number of M5. The E28, E39, and E62 are all fetching mid-$20ks for solid examples, with outliers entering the surrounding price decades. The E34 stands alone, seemingly stuck in the teens for anything decent, from 245k-mile survivors to examples like today’s 93k-mile, black-on-black business machine.
Some cars come and go, but the Mercedes-Benz SL has had staying power. Ever since the mid 1950s, this name has been going strong in the lineup, transforming from the original Gullwing coupe to a smaller hardtop two-seater, to the boulevard cruiser of the 1970s and 1980s and into the present day as a refined but capable luxury roadster. One of my favorite SLs was the R129 from the 1990s. It was no easy task taking over from the iconic R107 SL which had an impressive 18 year production run. This car was literally the face of Mercedes throughout the oil crises, recessions and the boom times of the 1980s, yet stayed fashionable all along. However, the new for 1990 300SL brought back an option to US buyers, albeit for a short time, that was lacking throughout the R107 production run: the manual gearbox.
Yes, you could order your 300SL from a US showroom with a 5-speed manual, making the most of a 3.0 liter inline-6 engine that was tasked with moving around 4,000 lbs. of car around. If you’re used to a V8 in your SL, performance is a bit underwhelming in this model, but given that only a few hundred R129s were sold in the US with a manual gearbox, the novelty factor is certainly there. This 300SL-24 for sale in Arizona is one of the nicest 5-speed manual R129s I’ve come across in my time at GCFSB, tempting for someone who absolutely must row their own.
