Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The 1981 Mercedes-Benz 280SL equipped with a 5-speed manual that we featured last year has turned up once again. While 560SL prices start to soar, the time is ripe to explore other R107s for a potential value. If you want something unique, at least to the US market, this one is for you.
One of the reasons I enjoy writing about cars, especially used ones, is that they remind me of a certain era. They often take me to a place in my head where I can imagine that vehicle in a particular setting and what kind of world surrounded it. A 1996 Audi A6 Avant makes me think of a Bavarian family on their way to a mountain getaway, an E30 M3 of a group of young Brits headed to the track for the weekend, an E39 M5 of a well heeled man racing across town to an important meeting. My love of cars has always been tied to the stories they have to tell or ones that they make me imagine when I come across them. I think that’s probably why I was drawn to the batshit crazy vehicle you see before you. This Mercedes is completely ridiculous on first glance, a rolling testament as to why money can’t buy you class.
But then a funny thing happens after you stare at it for awhile. You stop laughing and start wondering why the hell anyone would drop over a $100k building such a garish ride. Suddenly it’s not so funny anymore and you want to get to the bottom of this mystery. Was the person who paid for this mentally fit when they signed the papers to have Marque Motor Coach Builders cut the top off a W126 500 SEC? Did they loose a bet with a friend who had them paint it canary yellow? Did they grow up in culture where brown and yellow are the colors that represent the height of luxury? So many questions we’ll sadly never know the answer to but alas, such is the nature of many used vehicles. What I think we can assume happened here is someone had some extra money burning a hole in their pocket around the end of the year and in an altered state of consciousness decided to blow said money on a custom convertible I’m going to henceforth refer to as “Big Bird”.
465 lb-ft of torque, that’s a whole lot of twist. It’s stump pulling, Cummins diesel, father in-law impressing amounts of torque. The CLK63 AMG Black Series is more or less a street legal DTM car and it still baffles me that anyone with a valid drivers license and enough money can operate one of these vehicles. I know a couple people who have driven these cars and all of them get this particular look in their eyes when they talk about it, part fear, part respect, part lust. For a vehicle based on the rather bland C209 platform, the Black Series is a striking car that demands attention via its flared fenders and bonkers soundtrack.
Oddly enough the Black Series flies under the radar in the enthusiast community, it rarely comes up in conversation when discussing the most insane cars of the past decade. Perhaps it’s because Mercedes only built it for two years or because it came out around the time of the Audi S5. Though the S5 was much slower, I think it was a whole hell of a-lot better looking and the 8T3 platform interior was far ahead of that of the comparable Mercedes. The ergonomics of all the C209 coupes leave much to be desired, AMG goodies or not. I’ve been baby sitting a CLK 350 for the past couple weeks and the cabin completely disappoints me every time I get in it. The buttons feel cheap, many of them are exactly where I wouldn’t want them to be and the whole package seems to be phoned in overall. Â However, I’d be willing to put up with that lackluster interior in exchange for access to 507hp and I’m willing to bet you might be too.
Over the years, we’ve enjoyed showcasing high-performance or rather posh vehicles here at GCFSB. However, we do have an appreciation for the more mundane. These would be your base model or workaday vehicles. Those which are well-preserved especially grab our attention. This 1998 C280 for sale in Missouri represents the first year of the W202 C-class facelift. Two years later, W202 production would cease. Along with the demise of the R129 SL in 2002, a generation of styling language would come to an end.
The W202 C-class is a car I’m quite familiar with. I drove a 1998 C230 for six years and sold it to a friend, who has racked up over 200,000 miles. My mother, to this day, pilots a 2000 C280 in this very color combination. Her car is closing in on 130,000 miles, having bought it as a Starmark certified vehicle with only 7,000 miles on it. There is constant talk about replacing it with a present day Audi A4 or Volvo S60, but the old Benz just keeps going on from strength to strength.
I love seeing the spectrum of Mogdom, from the pure work trucks, basic restorations, all the way to the all-out earth conquerers. The common thread between most, however, is that they have been redone in some fashion in their lives. Today’s gorgeous, tan 416 looks exactly how it did when it was built in 1974 – and looked exactly this way ever year in between. Having covered just over 9k miles, everything – the undercarriage, the chrome, the wood on the hydraulic tipper-bed – is perfect. It’s amazingly collector quality, yet the price is below some of the workers we’ve seen.