Press "Enter" to skip to content
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.

Tag: 4.2 V8

This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.

1993 Mercedes-Benz 400SEL

There is something to be said about understated cars. Look at the current offerings around the automotive world and it seems like every single car has to be edgy and aggressive just to move the needle a little. Hell, look at the new Toyota Camry. This was a car that was the almost the literal definition of conservative and blending in, but now it has so many hard edges and design quirks that you’d think the designers at Toyota have gone crazy. It isn’t just the Camry, it is almost every other new car out there as well. A new Honda Accord? Random lines and curves going everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything really incorrect or bad about these cars, they are actually quite good cars, but subdued they are not. Sign of the times, I suppose.

That brings me to today’s car: the Mercedes-Benz W140 and this specific 400SEL up for sale in Canada. I’ve looked at more W140s that I can remember right now but this one has me looking at it a little differently for some reason. Maybe it is the Smoke Silver Metallic paint with the contrasting lower molding, but everything on the exterior of this car (outside of the hood star) just functions without any drama. The way that Mercedes shaped the end of the hood to cover up the wipers for less drag and a cleaner look. Even the taillights are molded the way they are because Mercedes studied how this specific design was easier to see as opposed to just a flat surface. All this is just the tip of the iceberg with the W140. I guess they didn’t spend a billion dollars to develop this car for nothing.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1993 Mercedes-Benz 400SEL on eBay

5 Comments

Feature Listing: 2008 Audi S4 DTM Edition

I think it’s wonderful that, as automobile enthusiasts, we’ve been able to live in the time period that revolutionized cars. For some, the muscle car era was the best; for others, the cars of the ’30s are the way to go. But while there may be some aspects of those generations of cars that are better, compare them to the high performance vehicles of today; they all start, stop, turn and run better than anything that has come before them. Not only are the limits of performance higher than they’ve ever been, but today’s cars are frankly better at being cars than older examples. Quite simply, it’s amazing considering the amount of electronics that are now carried on cars; get my iPhone cold or drop it, and it goes all haywire – yet sub freezing (as well as scorching) temperatures and pot holes are the norm for cars to soak up. Inside, cars are more quiet and luxurious than they ever have been, in general. If you never went past 1/4 throttle in a B7 S4, you’d have a refined, quiet luxury car. It’s even handsome, too, with a smooth face giving way to the lovely flared arches, a slight uptick in the tail helping to direct the air. But really setting cars apart over the past few years has been the amazing power they’ve been able to produce and their uncanny ability to transfer that power to the road. Go past that 1/4 pedal in this S4 and the experience changes; suddenly, you don’t have a sedate cruiser, you have a warp-speed sports car capable of carrying four shocked friends being forced back in their seats as the 4.2 liter all-aluminum 340 horsepower V8 heads towards the stratosphere, announcing through the 4 exhaust pipes that you’ve now broken every speed limit in the country and you still have three gears to go. Yet while there have been fast Audis in the past, “true” enthusiasts always complained they were heavy and no fun in the corners. To remedy that perceived fault, starting with the 25th Anniversary Edition and going forward, S4s received the same T3 Torsen setup as the RS4, now with a rearward power bias and capable of moving up to 100% of the power to the rear axle. If you think you know what all Audis drive like by reputation, you probably haven’t driven one of these cars. By the end of the B7 run, it was not a beefed up A4 anymore; it was in reality a slightly detuned RS4:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2008 Audi S4 DTM Edition on Craigslist Cleveland

4 Comments

How “Loaded” Is “Fully”? 2001 Audi S8 Options Breakdown

The term “Fully Loaded” is often overused by dealers, and sometimes – as our reader Brad is fond of pointing out – poorly used. He is correct that, when talking about a top of the range luxury executive car, saying that it has power windows, locks or steering seems really quite superfluous since you couldn’t opt out of those options. Earlier this week, another reader sent me a 2001 S8 and I started to tick off the options that were selected as I looked through the photos and over the description. Unfortunately, the pricing on that particular S8 John sent was so aggressively low that someone got a great deal and it disappeared almost immediately. What was really amazing was that the selected options were more costly than the second-hand asking price! But I found another heavily equipped 2001 S8 for sale – unsurprisingly, though, the dealer doesn’t list those rare options, rather relying on the tried and true “Fully Loaded” moniker. Let’s see if we can decode what the car was selected with – and what that would have cost:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2001 Audi S8 on Geebo

6 Comments