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Recently I took a look at an E39 Touring M-Sport, explaining how I’d finally come to see the appeal of the load lugging variants of my favorite German sedans. I couldn’t possibly leave things there without taking a look at the W124 estate. There’s one parked near where I live that proudly displays Mercedes “high mileage” award emblems in its grille. I’m not surprised. Practical and durable, the W124 possesses the kind of old school Mercedes build quality that leads many of their original owners to hang onto them for as long as possible.
The Mercedes-Benz R129, in my opinion, is in that limbo stage where a it’s not fully a considered a classic yet, but it’s starting to be eyed up as a future collectible for the right models. In typical SL fashion, the chassis ran a staggering 12 years from 1990-2002 which saw many face lifts and engine updates. Seeing as there was a giant difference in technology between 1990 and 2002, the first R129 that rolled off the line and is a lot different than the last R129 that did. Today’s SL for sale in California is towards the end of the production cycle and takes advantage of almost all Mercedes had to offer at the time.
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?
The rare, high-performance Porsche-Mercedes 500E continues to garner increasing recognition on the collector’s market, pushing prices for nice examples toward $40k. But if you have champagne tastes on a beer budget and want a V8 in your W124, you’d do well to consider a 400E instead. Produced between 1992 and 1996 (it would be rebadged as the E420 and lightly facelifted in 1994), Mercedes intended for the 400E to sit underneath the 500E in the model range. They created it by dropping the 4.2 liter, 32v version of the M119 block into the W124 chassis, beefing up the brakes and suspension while leaving the exterior identical to the more humble 300E. Power output was a healthy 275 hp. While the car was not in the same league as the 500E, this proved more than adequate for high-speed autobahn cruising, which is what these cars do best.
I have an affinity for vehicles that have hit the moon milestone (238,900 miles) while looking like they’ve done so with relative ease. For this 2003 G500, it has already hit the moon and is halfway home on the return trip. I think people have an irrational fear of higher mileage vehicles because they’ve either been with been with cars that didn’t age well or they’ve been told that higher mileage automatically means “bad”. There is some merit in that the more miles a vehicle has, the greater the risk of things failing, but I believe that you get out cars what you put in them — which a few exceptions, of course.
