Palmball
MB Enthusiast
Well, it seems I can't make my mind up
And I'm sure this is of no surprise to most people 
However.....a couple of scenarios have combined to make me reach a decision on the GLE whilst I still can with relatively limited pain:
1. My house build saga continues and even in the closing stages of the build, I'm faced with considerable extra costs that I'd not fully planned for. It's all my own choice, but they're things I either do easily now, or never do later (or at much higher cost if I do).
2. I do rather fancy the new C63 coupe and so does my other half (who the GLE actually belongs to). Given the lead time is supposedly 6-8 months, the GLE's value will have bombed catastrophically in that time.
Point 1 above means that I could do with realising the considerable equity I have in the GLE. If I really wanted to, I could get away with keeping it but this leads me onto point 3....I can't justify the cost of the GLE in comparison to the ML63. This isn't strictly fair on the GLE as it really does feel every bit of it's value and I am comparing new with used.....but I just can't rationalise the £40k difference between them when they are so similar
All combined, I've decided to get out of the GLE now. Someone has clearly been looking over me because the combination of the AMG's current rarity and a generous up-front discount means it's a whole lot less painful than it could've been moving on a brand new car after 7 weeks.
And that means another E63 is incoming
Well...you can at least credit me with putting my money where my mouth is as I did state when I sold the last E63 that I really liked it, and it was one of the best all rounders I've driven. You could call the 6 week period we owned the last E63 as an extended test drive
There was one thing I didn't like though, and that was the lack of a diff on the standard model - IMO, it fell back on it's stability control far too often. So this time I've hunted for an S model and by God, these are hard to buy reasonably! They're relatively rare and the ones for sale (even outside the MB network) are either very expensive (£70k) or the cheap ones sell very quickly - there were two in the mid-£50k's last week and I missed them both
One of them was being sold by my old chums at MB Birmingham Central who quickly offered me their other group stock car from their Caterham branch...but this was up at £63k (far too much money given the E-class being replaced next year). I cheekily offered them £55k and, to my surprise, we settled on a price within a couple of £k's of this, not a bad result getting a £6k+ discount on used car
I'm a very happy bunny because the car is under a year old and was a MB directors' car with just 2.5k on the clock. It's also spec'd to about £93k as follows:
- Designo graphite paint
- Night package
- Comfort ventilated seats
- Multi-contour seats with the full dynamic backrests (our last one had these and they're lovely)
- 360 camera
- Distronic Plus (in fact, it has the whole driver asst. package)
- Split fold rear seats (it's criminal that this isn't standard but our last one didn't have this and we then realised how much we need it)
- Comfort Access
- Rear seat entertainment (we have no use for this whatsoever but no doubt will help resale)
- And of course....the standard AMG diff lock
All in all, should be a nice car and if theres something typical about my car buying habits, when I buy car for a second time it tends to last longer.
The Designo paint looks very 'sparkly' and the interior looks brand new....here's some pictures of the old taxi
