500e

[Scott_F]

Do you buy what you like or what`s fashion???

I buy what I like as long as it offers decent value for money.

With ordinary looks, a dodgy gearbox, paintwork faults, a monster mileage and a £7.5k price tag I can't think of an older Mercedes model that offers less value for money.

If it's a V8 W124 that you really want, buy a decent looking one and transplant the engine from a 500SE W126. You may need to uprate the front springs to cope with the extra weight and some other modifications but the brakes should be up to the job. Such a project will cost about 1/3 of the price of the car in this post if you can be bothered but I can't really see the point.

The only attraction with these cars is performance but as I said earlier, if performance is your overriding criteria, you can buy far more performance for far less money elsewhere.

 

[Shude]

If you're after cheap performance then an Impreza or Mitsubishi Evo (amongst many others) offer more for less money than this particular car and the steering wheel will be on the right side !

I don't think cheap performance is what 500E/E500 owners are looking for! Besides if you're worried about what people think of you - what does driving an Impreza or Evo say?!

 

[Scott_F]

I don't think cheap performance is what 500E/E500 owners are looking for!

Agreed. It seems that they want expensive performance otherwise they'd be happy in an E200 !

 

[Dee-124CAB]

If it's a V8 W124 that you really want, buy a decent looking one and transplant the engine from a 500SE W126.

To be fair, that kind of homebrew conversion is highly unlikely to replicate or compete with the performance of a factory made 500E/E500...

If one was to embark on creating their own E500/500E, and were inclined to get the job done properly, £7.5k seems wholly inadequate...Thus making a car like this a potential bargain imo...

To simply describe a E500/500E as a W124 with a V8 shoehorned in, is doing Porsche and M-B a massive disservice, as they had infact gone to massive lengths to make them proper.

Dee

 

[Deleted member 11979]

I can see both sides of this argument.

If I am right, the W126 5 litre is not the same as the 500e 5 litre, I think 16 less valves and 50 - 60 less bhp!

The W124 500E is a sleeper, so rare and stylish in comparison to a Japanese car, but you're right, who would know what it was?

For me, that is the best part of it, hence a 560 W126, no one expects what that thing goes like, passengers and boy racers alike!

 

[Haris]

I can see the appeal, but for 7.5k I wouldn't be spending it on a W124. Absolute sleeper though

 

[Adam230K]

That could be a mechanical nightmare.. although it does look very tidy

 

[talbir]

I buy what I like as long as it offers decent value for money.

With ordinary looks, a dodgy gearbox, paintwork faults, a monster mileage and a £7.5k price tag I can't think of an older Mercedes model that offers less value for money.

If it's a V8 W124 that you really want, buy a decent looking one and transplant the engine from a 500SE W126. You may need to uprate the front springs to cope with the extra weight and some other modifications but the brakes should be up to the job. Such a project will cost about 1/3 of the price of the car in this post if you can be bothered but I can't really see the point.

The only attraction with these cars is performance but as I said earlier, if performance is your overriding criteria, you can buy far more performance for far less money elsewhere.

For performance, attach the twin turbo kit to a standard w124 300e over the weekend, and you'll have equal if not more performance than a 500e.

The 500e is about pedigree, quality, history, and the only Mecedes in the past 30 years that is effectively handbuilt.

I'm about to buy a 3rd 500E....i don't buy them for performance though. For performance, i'll drive my 911 turbo, or Supercharged 928, or even my wife's supercharged S55. if i want supremme engineering, build quality and a drive that is real fun and different to any other living Mercedes, i'll take the 500E.

talbir

 

[Scott_F]

For performance, attach the twin turbo kit to a standard w124 300e over the weekend, and you'll have equal if not more performance than a 500e.

The 500e is about pedigree, quality, history, and the only Mecedes in the past 30 years that is effectively handbuilt.

I'm about to buy a 3rd 500E....i don't buy them for performance though. For performance, i'll drive my 911 turbo, or Supercharged 928, or even my wife's supercharged S55. if i want supremme engineering, build quality and a drive that is real fun and different to any other living Mercedes, i'll take the 500E.

talbir

But if you're not going to utilise the extra performance that a 500E offers would it feel that much different from any decent-spec W124 coasting 1/3 or 1/4 of the price ?

 

[talbir]

But if you're not going to utilise the extra performance that a 500E offers would it feel that much different from any decent-spec W124 coasting 1/3 or 1/4 of the price ?

Totally, 100% yes. Put performance to one side, the 500e is a completely different experience to a stock 300E....the ride is smoother, the steering feedback is different, the suspension is firmer but retains refinement, the interior feels and looks a class apart. There is immense work that went into the detail of the 500e, which was not limited to drivetrain...even the headlamps are completely different brand and lighting setup ! It all adds up to a vastly improved driving experience on the stock w124.

I have never looked back since acquiring my first 500e in May 2004....that was a big leap of faith on two fronts : (1) I genuinely believed that no Merc was better than the w126 and (2) I was totally unsure of LHD. Very quickly, the 500e replaced the position held by the w126 in every respect and today, I would rather have a LHD car over it's RHD equivalent. Infact, 40% of my collection is LHD.

Any car that can so unequivocally change an individual has to be rather special ! In my experience, Mercedes achieved something very special with the 500e. I would happily like to own ten of these cars !

Cheers
Talbir

 

[Niks]

Well said Talbir.

Scott, everyone has different needs and requirements, and not everyone always sees things in the same way. There are some people who are perfectly happy with the ride quality, build quality and reliability of an E200/E220/E280/E320, and theres nothing wrong with that at all. However, there are also some people who are looking for more from the W124 variant, and its the E500/500E which can deliver. As mentioned earlier, it was a collaboration between Mercedes and Porsche, exactly like the collaboration between Mercedes and Audi when they made the RS2. The heritage, history, pedigree and uniqueness is what makes it that much more special to own.

I myself want to own an E500, and one day I will

If you dont see anything special about a 500E, and to you its just a V8 shoehorned into a W124 shell, then thats perfectly fine. I guess its just not a car for you. If by chance however, you ever did get to drive or be a passenger in one, you might just see what the fuss is all about

 

[scillyisles1]

As mentioned earlier, it was a collaboration between Mercedes and Porsche, exactly like the collaboration between Mercedes and Audi when they made the RS2. The heritage, history, pedigree and uniqueness is what makes it that much more special to own.

Just one small point Mercedes and Audi did not make the RS2 - it was made by Porsche for Audi on the production line that had just stopped producing the 500E. I guess that is why the RS2 is so well built and is also a milestone in Audi's history as the 500E was in Mercedes.

 

[ianrandom]

I got to be a passenger in one it and was very fun, if a bit scary. I'd love one!
Very fast and very solid, how much fun would it be dusting other high performance cars while looking like an average older family sized MB

 

[stwat]

YouTube - Mercedes 500E & CLS 63 AMG by autocar.co.uk
[YOUTUBE]YouTube - Mercedes 500E & CLS 63 AMG by autocar.co.uk[/YOUTUBE]

 

[momomo]

YouTube - Mercedes 500E & CLS 63 AMG by autocar.co.uk
[YOUTUBE]YouTube - Mercedes 500E & CLS 63 AMG by autocar.co.uk[/YOUTUBE]

Thats Talbir's 500E

 

[Scott_F]

Totally, 100% yes. Put performance to one side, the 500e is a completely different experience to a stock 300E....the ride is smoother, the steering feedback is different, the suspension is firmer but retains refinement, the interior feels and looks a class apart. There is immense work that went into the detail of the 500e, which was not limited to drivetrain...even the headlamps are completely different brand and lighting setup ! It all adds up to a vastly improved driving experience on the stock w124.

I have never looked back since acquiring my first 500e in May 2004....that was a big leap of faith on two fronts : (1) I genuinely believed that no Merc was better than the w126 and (2) I was totally unsure of LHD. Very quickly, the 500e replaced the position held by the w126 in every respect and today, I would rather have a LHD car over it's RHD equivalent. Infact, 40% of my collection is LHD.

Any car that can so unequivocally change an individual has to be rather special ! In my experience, Mercedes achieved something very special with the 500e. I would happily like to own ten of these cars !

Cheers
Talbir

I must admit that I wasn't aware of all the enhancements that went into a 500E and you obviously appreciate these refinements. But the 500E clearly has the same bodywork issues as any other W124 of the period and this one has mechanical issues that should have been sorted out before it went on sale which would worry me straight away. I'm also lost as to why anyone would see a LHD car as more attractive than a RHD car here in the UK.

However, for most people the attraction will be mainly about performance or else they would buy a 1991 W124 with 215,000 miles on the clock for about 1/15th of the price of this car.

And because the attraction is mainly about performance I'd have a few issues:

- You'll soon come up against more modern cars with more performance
- They'll cost less
- The steering wheel will be where it should be
- They won't look like an old Hamburg taxi

Please don't misunderstand me - I am a big fan of the W124 and currently own one. And I am not a fan of the quicker Scoobies / Evos that will out-drag an 500E. I have no problem having an old car that looks like a cheap old car or spending a considerable sum on a car that looks a little bit special. However, I'd have a big problem with spending a lot of money on something that looks like it came from an advert in the local free-ads paper (which this one does) on the basis of its superior performance only to find that this performance, although very good, is unexceptional by modern standards.

 

[Shude]

However, for most people the attraction will be mainly about performance or else they would buy a 1991 W124 with 215,000 miles on the clock for about 1/15th of the price of this car.

Exclusivity.

 

[Deleted member 11979]

Not everything in life is the sum of it's parts

 

[Scott_F]

Exclusivity.

The exclusivity that comes with owning a 20 year old W124 ?

 

[Charles Morgan]

For those who care about such things, yes.

A Mercedes legend of a car.