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There is a reason why Jay Leno calls the W109 6.3 his favorite Mercedes-Benz. It’s a classic Mercedes design both inside and out then finished off with the M100 6.3 liter V8 that still holds it own with modern cars. It’s what a Mercedes-Benz should be. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new super AMG cars that have 650 horsepower and can drive themselves down the road, but you can get that from any brand now. In 1969, this was the car if you wanted a European super sedan. Not to mention you paid for it too at over $14,000, which was only a few thousand less than a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. But the Silver Shadow didn’t compare to the 6.3 in terms of power, build quality and reliability. That’s why this car still has a huge following and even higher demand to this day. So let’s check out this 1969 for sale in Massachusetts.
The 1971 Mercedes–Benz 300 SEL 6.8 AMG is one of my favorite cars ever. The ‘Red Pig’ entered 1971 24-hour race at Spa as the over-weight underdog. To everyone’s surprise, it finished 1st in it’s class and second overall thanks to the madmen at AMG who took the already impressive M100 engine and pushed it to 428 horsepower and 448 lb-ft. This example for sale in California isn’t the famous Rote Sau, but it is a very nice tribute that will have you yelling ”Sooie!”
Even in the face of an increasing drive towards economy, manufacturers are still battling it out in the horsepower race. Mercedes has been one of those companies leading the charge over the last decade, with some formidable performance entries with forced induction V8 and V12 engines. This tradition started years prior with this car, the 300SEL 6.3. Taking the M100 V8 from the 600 and shoehorning it into the smaller W109 S-class was no small task, but the result was a luxury saloon that could hit 60 mph in just a tick over six seconds. This was remarkable performance for the day, competing favorably with a number of American muscle cars while providing unmatched comfort at the same time. This 300SEL 6.3 for sale in California is a four-owner car, originally purchased by the owner of a Mercedes-Ben franchise in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend one of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America’s June Jamboree shows at the Mercedes-Benz Headquarters in Montvale, New Jersey. The car I was driving at the time, a 1998 C230, won a popular choice award, mainly down to condition and originality. Across the parking lot, a car caught my eye that is still haunting me to this day. It was a 1967 250S sedan finished in Arabian Grey with a red MBTex interior. It also had a 4-speed manual gearbox, with floor shift. With the simple dog dish hubcaps over steel wheels, there was something refreshingly honest about this car. This 300SEL 3.5 for sale in Portugal reminds me a lot of that particular Mercedes from years past, albeit this one has the 3.5 liter V8 residing under the bonnet, with leather seating in place of the MBTex.
The terms “hot rod” and “luxury sedan” seem mutually exclusive, but there’s been a few nice attempts to meld the two genres together over the past couple decades, the likes of which include the W124-based Mercedes-Benz 500E/E500, E39 BMW M5, Audi S8 and even some non-German examples such as the Pontiac G8 GXP and Cadillac CTS-V. The granddaddy of them all, however, is this car here, the Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3. When Mercedes developed the M100 V8 engine for use in the 600 Grösser, some boffins within the company thought it would be cute to drop this hulk of a powerplant into the 300SEL to create a sedan that could embarrass purpose built muscle cars at your local drag strip. It’s engineering exercises such as this that prove the Germans have a sense of humor after all.
