Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I never tire of rare and unique colors. Combine that with a rare and unique vehicle? Even better. This is a 2014 Mercedes-Benz E63 S AMG Estate in the color Dolomite Brown Metallic. Sometimes it looks brown, sometimes it looks purple and even at the right light you might even mistake it for a burnt orange. Either way, I love the color. But I don’t exactly love it on this car. Let me explain why.
Earlier this week I looked at a 2003 G500 and explained that despite it being a relatively mass produced Mercedes, it doesn’t depreciate like you’d expect. Today’s featured car is somewhat like the G, except it’s a lot faster and a whole lot more rare. Enter the R63 AMG – the answer to a question no one asked. This is a vehicle which I still can’t understand why Mercedes would green-light for production.
The short of it is that the normally mundane first-general R-Class was given to AMG to let them do their thing. The result was pulling everything out of the AMG parts bin, bolting various parts up where they count and coming away with an all-wheel drive people hauler than does 60 mph in around 4.4 seconds. Carter recently included it in his insane van article for The Truth About Cars. Seeing as Mercedes isn’t totally insane, the R63 AMG was limited to a production in the mid-200s worldwide with only 30 making it to the U.S. and a mere 5 to Canada. So as these monsters hit the 10 year-old mark, what’s going on with their value?
Black, white, silver or gray. Google search ‘CL63 AMG’ then click the images tab and that’s all you’ll see on these cars. (Ignore that red one. What was that guy even thinking?) I mean I get it, those are the colors that sell. I’m guilty of it. My AMG is silver because 97% of my cars produced were either black, white or silver. German cars are serious, and the buyers of their cars are too. The German models that aren’t so serious (Porsche 911) has every color in the rainbow and people go wild for that (but still usually still buy black, silver, white or gray).
But just because these are serious cars doesn’t mean we can’t venture off into other colors that aren’t on the scale between between black and white. Navy blue is a wonderful color that isn’t in your face. How about a nice darker green? Specifically, how about Jade Green Metallic? We are in luck because that’s exactly what the 2008 CL63 AMG for sale on Long Island, New York is.
From ”I leased my spouse one” to ”Yeah, look up DTM on Wikipedia, you’ll see” is what the base CLK is to the roided-up Black Series. That, and about another $90,000. We’ve covered the Black Series cars fairly well on GCFSB so I don’t want to ramble on, but I think AMG did the best job they could given what Mercedes gave them in the CLK. A mix of C-Class chassis with E-Class features, the W209, even with AMG guise, was never the most hardcore sports coupe made compared to the holy grail BMW M3 that is fawned over. But when AMG teased the US with the CLK-DTM and finally gave us a taste with the CLK63 AMG Black Series, it was everything that we didn’t know we wanted. So if you are looking for a little piece of DTM heaven, let’s check out this 2008 for sale in California.
A few days ago I featured a 1981 Mercedes-Benz 500SEL which I called a ”money is no object” car. To walk into the dealer 28 years later with that same goal of a ”money is no object” you have your choice of the S63 AMG or the S65 AMG, which is about the same kind of hard decision like picking between Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie. Both are going to cost you a ton of money, (about $133,000 for the S63 and a whopping $198,000 for the S65), both are going to attract a fair amount of attention and both might be a risk to have long-term. But all that be damned, when you are with them, you are going to feel like a million bucks. If this is the kind of feeling you want — as well as maybe a little bit of risk — then this the 2009 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG located in central Massachusetts might just for you.
