A few weeks ago I dug into the first generation Mercedes-Benz ML and explained while it was a hit when it came to sales, the actual nuts and bolts of the vehicle were less than impressive. A lot of you chimed in the comments section and shared your experiences with them and I can’t say I was all that surprised at what I saw. Naturally, as the years went on and Mercedes gave a face lift to the old Alabama trash can, things got a little better. Mercedes pretty much had to as every other luxury automaker was going full swing into the SUV market including Lexus with its RX300 in 1999, BMW with its X5 in 2000 and Porsche coming in heavy with the Cayenne in 2004. Suddenly the fight for all those upper-middle class dollars got really intense to see who could out do each other and still have to fend off the old guard upscale SUVs from Land Rover and the Toyota/Lexus Land Cruiser/LX.
As the years went on, Mercedes somehow had the space to add not one, not two, but three V8s under the hood of the W163. The M113 4.2, 5.0 and 5.4 liters were all borrowed from other Mercedes cars in the lineup, with the 5.4 coming from AMG. Today’s ML up for sale in San Diego I wanted to look at features the 5.0 liter badged at the ML500. Naturally, there are a bunch of these ML500s out there for sale and I didn’t want to pick any average one because they aren’t all that interesting and you can probably guess the condition they are in. This one however has just 57,000 miles and features the rare Designo interior option that I always love checking out. But much like the very low mile and clean ML320 from weeks ago, are you willing to pay the above average price for it just because it is clean?
