Well true to his word, the gentleman who owned the car before me provided me with a nice pair of lockable Thule roof bars that he bought new for it and only used once
I was working about 10 mins/3 miles away (yes even in London you can manage that when the schools are out..!) from where he lived so just popped past on the way home.
All I can say is out of many of the streets I pass by in London I don’t think I’ve seen as many six-figure plus cars parked in one place aside from the likes of Goodwood or a supercar meet - Ferraris/Bentleys/Porsche etc. A mean looking Brabus G-wagen (700 bi-turbo) and some nice old-money cars like a tidy 124 coupé and a couple of classics, plus a few of the usual motors on Foreign plates, Dubai etc.
Had a bit of a chat with him (as you do) and it was interesting to learn some of the history behind it. He bought it almost new (ex demo) from MB Southampton hence the spec (I guess the designo paint and fancy red calipers looked good under the showroom lights)
He bought it as a family car when they were expecting their first child and had it alongside his 911 (997) which got stolen shortly after. They replaced the 911 with a Range Rover (practical reasons) and in his words they then had two family cars. His wife used to prefer driving the RR so the E63 had very little use, apparently only used about once a month, often less (and a new battery almost every winter he reckoned) and once for a trip with his bike on the roof bars.
He explained that they realised it was time to move it on when looking at how few miles it had done at service time, hence they eventually p/x’d it for another 4x4 this year when it was coming up for another service.
Funny enough, I mentioned I’d only had it a week or so and explained the issue with the headlight fault. He reckons the garage knew about it and paid what they did accordingly (I knew the figure anyway from when I first viewed the car as they’d left the p/x documents from the previous owner in the history file..)
He then reckoned that the car which he bought from them (not new) had a faulty door handle, which the garage were supposed to be sorting out themselves before he collected the car - and also needed an MoT. I have no reason whatsoever to doubt him - he tells me that the MOT wasn’t done and...the door handle was still faulty. He just got it sorted out from his own pocket rather than drive an hour plus back to the garage
Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Anyway, apologies if it bores you but it was kind of nice to meet up with the person who owned the car for the majority of its life and understand a little more about it - and the unusually low mileage etc, there’s always a story to a car’s past with things like this
Nice guy who clearly loved his cars in the past but probably too busy with family and work these days, I can relate to that
