It all depends what your requirements are. If live in the countryside and you're regularly hitting the floor with your right foot and doing some serious acceleration, as well as needing the ... gentleman's jewellery element... the AMG is the better choice. 0-60 in 4.5 and 18 mpg - pretty impressive.
You're getting that particular E55 at a discount because you need to spend couple of grand on the braking and steering system (and probably fixing an oil leak), according to the MOT advisories.
And you should allow a couple of thousand for the miscellaneous surprises you'll get on an AMG car that's about to turn a hundred thousand miles.
If you do most of your mileage on motorways and A roads with speed cameras around, a 385 bhp E500, doing 0-62 in 5.3 seconds might be fast enough, with an ability to cruise at 100 all day long (on European motorways in kph, obviously) while averaging something like 27mpg in week to week driving. With only 60k miles on the clock, you should only be seeing the routine servicing costs, not the bigger repair bills as things go past 100k miles.
The E500 is over-priced at £9k from a private seller. A similar (5.5 litre 60k miles), but literally immaculate, car was sold last month by a Midlands dealer for £7,500. However price and value is in the eye of the beholder.
To misquote someone above, it's all in your own eyes. It's what you see when you drive it, or when you walk past to walk to the station....(There are many reasons why these cars typically only do 6,000 miles a year.)
And, of course, some love silver while others say once you've tried black, you'll never go back.
Those E55 MOT advisory points from its current MoT are
- Nearside Rear Brake hose slightly deteriorated (1.1.12 (b) (ii))
- Offside Rear Brake hose slightly deteriorated (1.1.12 (b) (ii))
- Nearside Front Track rod end ball joint has slight play (2.1.3 (b) (i))
- Offside Front Track rod end slightly misaligned (2.1.3 (e))
- Oil leak, but not excessive (8.4.1 (a) (i))
- Nearside Front Brake disc worn, pitted or scored, but not seriously weakened (1.1.14 (a) (ii))
- Offside Front Brake disc worn, pitted or scored, but not seriously weakened (1.1.14 (a) (ii))
