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Back in 1993, if you hopped down to the local Mercedes-Benz dealer and asked for a 600SL, they’d gladly give to you — in exchange of giving them almost $130,000. If you somehow were dissatisfied with the car in terms of performance, you called up Mercedes super-tuner RENNtech and told them to do their thing with it — in exchange of another $60,000. Now doing some quick math here, we are at a grand total of around $190,000. Keep in mind we are still talking in terms of 1993 money. To put that in perspective, that’s over $316,000 in 2016 dollars. And you thought a drug addiction was expensive! So what did this insane amount of money buy you?
Many have tried, but few manufacturers have succeeded in surpassing the Mercedes-Benz S-class as the bar by which all large luxury sedans are set. This isn’t anything new, as Mercedes has had a long, storied history of luxury sedans dating back to the early reaches of the 20th century. The S-class came into its own in the 1950s and 1960s, when the W111 appeared, which would be sold in coupe and cabriolet form alongside the W108 and W109 sedans. These S-classes would carry on into the early 1970s and would feature a variety of engine and body options, from short to long wheelbase with everything from a 2.5 liter inline-6 under the hood to the 6.3 liter V8 from the 600 Grösser. This 250SE for sale in The Netherlands has the fuel-injected 2.5 liter inline-6 under the hood mated to a four-speed manual gearbox.
Another day, another old diesel Benz. I know, I know. But when I saw this one I couldn’t resist. Yesterday I wrote up an ‘87 300SDL. While that car presented very nicely, in truth the better W126 diesels are either the early, short wheelbase models (’81-’85), like today’s car, or the very late ones (’90-’91), during which time the short and long wheelbase diesels shared the same engines. As noted yesterday, the diesel motors in the cars in the period in between had a few design faults that could potentially affect their longevity (quite unusual for a Mercedes product). This particular car is an ’85, the last year in which you’d find the legendary OM617 engine under the hood.
We’ve featured the 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II a few times in the past couple months. Today we have another one that takes an already pretty bonkers car and turns the dial up a few more notches. This Evo II in California is another one of the 502 made that found it’s way stateside and of course, carries a mid-six figure price tag. But like I hinted at, this one has a few extras that turns the car into a pseudo DTM car for the streets. So let’s check this rare W201 with a little extra something out.
The other day I wrote about how I was getting the itch to swap out my daily driver, an E34 525i, for an older Benz. One contender for the car’s replacement is a W124. But I’m also very tempted by the W126. There’s something irresistible about these timelessly classy and stately cars. A 560SEL would be my first choice, but I have a long commute and a V8 is therefore out of the question. So if I were to take the plunge on an old S-class for daily duties, it would have to be diesel model. From what I’ve read online, the six cylinder diesel engine in the 300SDL gets pretty similar gas mileage to my 525i – around 27-28MPG on the highway – which is pretty remarkable given the size of these things.
