By 1978, the C107 was fairly long in the tooth. It wasn’t so much that it was an antiquated design; sure, it was 7 years old but let’s not forget that the R107 convertible version would soldier on for another amazing 10 years, meaning it was one of the longest lived Mercedes-Benz chassis ever. But the personal coupe had two issues – one was from within, with a new big coupe launching in the early 1980s in the W126 chassis. The much more modern C126 effectively negated the purpose of the C107. But the real issue was the competition from BMW, and more importantly Porsche – both of which managed to thoroughly out-class the sports coupe. The E24 was a much more modern and sporty car; though it had a smaller inline-6 motor and no V8 was available, the E24 was several hundred pounds lighter than the C107 and much more of a sporty coupe. But the real revolution was Porsche’s new front-engined Grand Tourer, the 928. Porsche managed to get both more power and more sport out of its interpretation of the GT car, making the C107 seem decidedly dated in comparison. Now a few generations on, finding clean 6s from the 1970s is near impossible in the U.S., and while there are 928s out there, rightly or wrongly they have a certain reputation as complicated cars that are hard to keep running correctly (or, at very least, quite expensive to). The result? The C107 may be the best 1970s personal sports coupe value these days:
