Warning!
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.
This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.
Last week I checked out a 2015 Mercedes-Benz S550 with a little under 112,000 miles and while that number isn’t super high, when broken down by year, it is well above average. The price of the car reflected the above average mileage, as it should, but it probably wasn’t a great enough deal to be really temping since it still was almost $33,000. Today, I have another S-Class with a bunch of miles and a really attractive price that will probably make anyone consider it just to see what happens. This 1996 S600 with the M120 V12, checks in with a little over 243,000 miles and honestly doesn’t look all that bad considering its age and use. Again, it is all about price when it comes to rolling the dice on this car, but honestly, how can you go wrong?
The Mercedes-Benz W140 Coupe, or C140, is one of those cars that you might have forgotten about until you see one in the wild or stumble across one for sale. There is good reason for that seeing that Mercedes made a little over 400,000 W140 sedans while only producing 26,000 coupes. You can see that is quite a difference in production numbers and now that the youngest W140 is almost 20 years-old, they are only are getting more rare. Today, I wanted to check out the rarest W140 ever produced, the CL420. Just 2,500 CL420/S420 Coupes were produced from 1994 to 1998 and exactly zero ever made it to America. These Coupes used the 4.2 liter M119 V8 borrowed from the sedan and was the smallest engine choice available in the C140. This 1996 up for sale in Spain is probably one of the most well-preserved CL420s out there despite its 112,000 miles. I just wish I could bring it to America.
This is a Turquoise Green Metallic 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe, located in Florida, with Cashmere Beige interior and 50,324 miles on it. It also has the factory Aerokit. The paint code is 25D, which I mention because there are a few colors that went with some version of Turquoise during the ’90s and in some cases they can be dramatically different colors while in others very similar. Turquoise Blue (code 3AR/3AS) is a phenomenal non-metallic blue and one of my favorites from the period. It has some of the brightness of Riviera Blue, though in a darker hue. It’s great. I believe there also was an earlier version of Turquoise that was non-metallic and much closer to the blue of Turquoise Blue than the color we see here. Similar to this 993 is Turquoise Metallic (code 25C), which is a slight variation of this Turquoise Green. The German helps differentiate the two: Tuerkis Metallic vs Tuerkis Perlcolor. Add in the even more green Wimbledon Green Metallic and then we have nearly the whole spectrum for this one type of greenish blue exterior. Porsche certainly knows how to provide options. All you have to do is figure out which one you like best.
People are usually pretty hot or cold on the Mercedes-Benz W140 Coupe. They followed up the massively successful and popular W126 Coupe and it’s not that these are bad cars at all, but it’s tough to follow-up something that was so great. I think lots of times people even forget about these cars because you don’t see them all that often. Mercedes made just over 8,500 of the V12-powered 600SEC/S600 Coupe/CL600 for worldwide sale over an eight-year production period so they are relatively rare compared to the V12 sedan that was produced to the tune of 36,000. Today’s car, a 1996 up for sale outside of Detroit, is one of the finest S600 Coupes I’ve seen come up for sale. The price? Well worth the asking in my eyes.
Back in March I took a look at two Audi A4s, comparing an early FronTrak example to a late loaded Avant. Though it looked to be in good shape, the running condition of the ’96 was in question. More problematic, it was a front driver, and hooked to the Tiptronic 5-speed automatic. As a result, despite the low entry price point, it was really hard to get excited about it.
Today’s A4 remedies many of the ailments afflicting that particular A4. It’s still in an Audi signature color combination from the 90s; in this case, Emerald Green Mica over Ecru leatherette. But the highlight here is the drivetrain, with the much more desirable 5-speed manual driving all four wheels through the combination of a Torsen center differential and an electronic rear differential “lock”. Best of all? It’s in great condition and the auction is no reserve!
