Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Whenever I spot a Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG with low miles, they inevitably get snapped up in short order. Just witness the one we featured last week if you need evidence. If you don’t need the power and persona of an AMG variety Benz, then a C280 like this one for sale in New York could be just the ticket. This car is barely broken in with just over 20,000 miles on the clock and represents the last year of the inline-6 in the W202.
Want to go fast but be stealth about it? Mercedes-Benz AMG models have always been a great way to have practicality mixed with insane amounts of power, but today’s models are a bit more telling on their outward appearance with regards to their mission. Their forebears were a bit more conservative, though. Witness this 1997 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG for sale in Florida with less than 60k miles on the clock. This year was the rarest for what was the first AMG collaboration after the tuner was brought in-house by Mercedes, with only 236 units produced.
There’s always some debate when an E36 BMW M3 equipped with an automatic gearbox appears on GCFSB. Seems like an out of place option, but I’ve become more accepting of it as I age. A sign that I’m going soft? Perhaps. A bit further north of BMWs home turf, Mercedes-Benz was busy with AMG in the mid-1990s creating their first official in-house collaboration after the company absorbed the tuning firm a few years earlier. Available only with a 4-speed automatic gearbox, the C36 AMG was not what you would call a direct successor to the famous Cosworth tuned 190Es, but it took that prior concept in a more luxury oriented direction per the 500E/E500 formula. This C36 for sale in Arizona has a reasonable 77,000 miles on the clock and is a good way to enjoy your speed discreetly.
The C class is one of those cars that people tend to use as a durable good. Whether it’s for taxi use in Germany or as a daily commuter here in the US, many of these cars have covered a good bit of miles. I racked up over 80,000 miles on a 1998 C230 and a friend of mine is still enjoying that car to this day. But, like the 1995 C220 in our Feature Listing gallery, this 1997 C280 Sport for sale outside of Philadelphia has escaped the ravages of time with only 52,000 miles on the clock. The Sport package added blacked out exterior trim, carbon fiber look trim in place of the traditional wood inside, a smaller diameter steering wheel, tighter suspension and 15†AMG alloy wheels.
It’s been two decades since Mercedes-Benz absorbed AMG as their in-house tuning firm. Each year, more and more fast Benzes have appeared with the infamous badge on their posteriors, tipping off that extra juice under the skin to the casual observer. One AMG model that I feel went a bit unloved was the C32 AMG. Sandwiched between two V8 AMG C class models in the US market (the W202 C43 and W203 C55), the C32 offered more punch via the way of a Kompressor, or supercharger, as was the case with a number of AMG and non-AMG models in the Mercedes lineup at the time. A lot of early W203 C classes, including the C32, have been run hard and put up wet, but this C32 for sale in New Jersey appears to have led a fairly pampered life by the looks of it.