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Some of my favorite cars that I like to dig into are cars built for or owned by significant individuals. Sometimes it is wealthy or important business people, but most of time with Mercedes-Benz it is heads of state. These cars are usually built with no expense spared because the person riding inside the car is worth far more than whatever it costs to buy the car. This is true of today’s car, a 1995 Mercedes-Benz S600 up for sale in Florida.
This S600 was built by TRASCO, a company in Germany that builds Mercedes that can literally take a bomb and everything up to that. This car is built to ”B7 level”, which is every firearm up to and including armor piecing rifles. You are probably asking who needs this kind of protection in the United States? Well, none other than the Sultan of Brunei. You’ve probably heard the crazy stories of him owning over 7,000 cars and manufacturers building him one-off creations of cars that you don’t even know existed. He has 11 McLaren F1s, 20 Koenigseggs and 300 Ferraris. The guy loves cars and spends his out of this world wealth to buy them and basically let them sit. But again, why would the Sultan of a country off the South China Sea need a car in California? Well, so he has something to be chauffeured around in when he is visiting his 38 million dollar home in Beverly Hills, of course. It doesn’t even end there. This car is supposedly one of four examples built just for the Sultan to be used in America. That’s how crazy this guy is with cars.
Last week I checked out a 2015 Mercedes-Benz S550 with a little under 112,000 miles and while that number isn’t super high, when broken down by year, it is well above average. The price of the car reflected the above average mileage, as it should, but it probably wasn’t a great enough deal to be really temping since it still was almost $33,000. Today, I have another S-Class with a bunch of miles and a really attractive price that will probably make anyone consider it just to see what happens. This 1996 S600 with the M120 V12, checks in with a little over 243,000 miles and honestly doesn’t look all that bad considering its age and use. Again, it is all about price when it comes to rolling the dice on this car, but honestly, how can you go wrong?
The Mercedes-Benz W140 Coupe, or C140, is one of those cars that you might have forgotten about until you see one in the wild or stumble across one for sale. There is good reason for that seeing that Mercedes made a little over 400,000 W140 sedans while only producing 26,000 coupes. You can see that is quite a difference in production numbers and now that the youngest W140 is almost 20 years-old, they are only are getting more rare. Today, I wanted to check out the rarest W140 ever produced, the CL420. Just 2,500 CL420/S420 Coupes were produced from 1994 to 1998 and exactly zero ever made it to America. These Coupes used the 4.2 liter M119 V8 borrowed from the sedan and was the smallest engine choice available in the C140. This 1996 up for sale in Spain is probably one of the most well-preserved CL420s out there despite its 112,000 miles. I just wish I could bring it to America.
The W140 Mercedes-Benz S500 Grand Edition is a one of those cars that you probably forgot about if you knew they existed in the first place. I looked at a really nice one about a year ago and they don’t pop up for sale all that often. I’m sure that has a lot to do with just 600 of these cars ever made, but a lot of times when I do see them for sale they are in a pretty sad state. Chalk that up to the W140 not really being a collectible yet and the market still really soft on them, but I think this car has some serious potential to be a in demand model when it comes to Mercedes enthusiasts. If you want the best of what the W140 has to offer and don’t want to fully dive in with a S600, then the S500 Grand Edition is probably going to be your answer. This example up for sale in California is probably the nicest one I’ve seen come up for sale in a long time and I’m even more surprised at it’s condition given its four owners and over 100,000 miles. The question is, are you willing to pony up a heavy premium for such a nice example?
There is something to be said about understated cars. Look at the current offerings around the automotive world and it seems like every single car has to be edgy and aggressive just to move the needle a little. Hell, look at the new Toyota Camry. This was a car that was the almost the literal definition of conservative and blending in, but now it has so many hard edges and design quirks that you’d think the designers at Toyota have gone crazy. It isn’t just the Camry, it is almost every other new car out there as well. A new Honda Accord? Random lines and curves going everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything really incorrect or bad about these cars, they are actually quite good cars, but subdued they are not. Sign of the times, I suppose.
That brings me to today’s car: the Mercedes-Benz W140 and this specific 400SEL up for sale in Canada. I’ve looked at more W140s that I can remember right now but this one has me looking at it a little differently for some reason. Maybe it is the Smoke Silver Metallic paint with the contrasting lower molding, but everything on the exterior of this car (outside of the hood star) just functions without any drama. The way that Mercedes shaped the end of the hood to cover up the wipers for less drag and a cleaner look. Even the taillights are molded the way they are because Mercedes studied how this specific design was easier to see as opposed to just a flat surface. All this is just the tip of the iceberg with the W140. I guess they didn’t spend a billion dollars to develop this car for nothing.
