Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Last week I looked at a low mileage 1991 560SEC and explained while I think they are amazing cars, buying a ultra low mileage one isn’t the best decision if you want to fully enjoy them. Today’s C126 for sale in New York has a little more miles and is a little less pricey that maybe makes it a little better option if you are looking for a great SEC.
The Mercedes-Benz 560SEC quickly went from another used, old Mercedes to a modern classic that everyone suddenly wants. Yes, the W126 coupes have always been more desirable than the sedans but recently a huge demand gap has grown between the two. Finding a coupe for sale at typical well-used Mercedes prices is rare or when you do find a really nice one, be prepared to shell out a lot of money. The latter is the case today for this 1991 offered for sale in California.
I’ve posted a number of W126 sedans over the past few weeks, making no secret of my love for the 80s era S-class. But no less desirable, in my view, is the two-door variant based on the same platform, the C126. These cars offered all the luxury and advanced (for the time) safety features of the sedans, not to mention their elegant and timeless styling, but with the added panache of a sexy, low-slung, pillar-less coupe. As with their four door counterparts, used prices for these cars are a little all over the map these days. This ’90 560SEC is a middle of the market example that appears to be in turn-key condition.
Unless you buy a new car, you seem to always take some risk as to how a car has been treated, what kind of maintenance it has had and most importantly what kind of service it’s going to give you once you take ownership. Sometimes these risks are small but a lot of times, especially in the case of used German cars, it is a lot of risk if you are spending more than a few thousand dollars. Even with dealer maintained cars, technicians sometimes rush through jobs or lack the attention to detail just to get the car off their rack and move on to else to keep those hours moving. Today’s car has a seller that puts that risk at the very low end of the scale when buying a 26 year-old expensive German car. Enter Kent Bergsma:
A couple of years ago this video of a murdered-out 560SEC AMG surfaced on Jalopnik and I fell in love. Not only did the car have tremendous, old-school presence, the film showed an owner who wasn’t afraid to smoke the back tires while driving it quickly and aggressively. Hooning the large, pillar-less brute looked like tremendous fun. Unfortunately, authentic AMG cars from the pre-merger period don’t come to market very frequently. And when they do, they are usually priced well beyond the means of mere mortals like myself (you can see examples we’ve featured before here, here and here). A cheaper alternative would be to find a regular SEC that has had some AMG exterior parts installed, like this one.
