The seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe E55 AMG offers to let you bring a mechanic round to check it out. Let’s see if its price demands you also bring along your accountant.
There’s a question that pops up perennially on Reddit that asks if you could bring back one extinct animal from history what would it be? I’m constantly frustrated that no one ever offers the obvious answer, which is a unicorn, but there you go.
Long gone automakers are like those extinct animals in that they aren’t bringing ‘em back. Oh sure, there have been furtive attempts to do so—Maybach, Borgward, etc.—but how many of those have had much long-term success?
That’s why I don’t think we’ll ever see another new Saab, and that makes yesterday’s tasty 2007 9-3 Sport Combi Aero such an interesting proposition. It rocked a seriously nice presentation as well as a promise of joyous tomfoolery with a 350 horsepower V6 under its hood. That all made its $4,700 asking price feel downright restorative, earning the Saab a 74 percent Nice Price win in the process.
Daimler Benz is an automaker that, unlike Saab, has stood the test of time. It is in fact, one of the oldest automakers that’s still around. Over the course of that long and storied existence the company has produced a number of iconic and desirable models. One of those is represented by this 2004 W211 E55 AMG saloon.
This was Mercedes’ second take on the E55 AMG and upon its debut in 2003 it earned the title of fastest production sedan on the planet. Let’s see if this one is positioned to sell a fast as it supposedly goes.
The bodywork comes in Brilliant Silver Metallic which allows the five-spoke alloys to blend in owing to their extremely similar hue. Those wheels are factory AMGs but sadly have had some after-the-fact work done on them by a curb.
The rest of the body looks to be in decent shape in the pics, and is only marred by a missing front valance grille, a black-painted main grille, and the inherently large gap between hood and headlamps, a feature all W211s share.
The interior keeps up the impressive impression with blackout leather and dark burlwood trim amidst an environment awash in buttons, dials and screens. The only major issue here seems to be some loosening of the material on the top of the center armrest. Other than that, it’s the velvet glove wrapped around a killer hammer.
That hammer is the supercharged M113 V8. These engines were hand-built by AMG and wring a massive 469 horses and 516 lb-ft of twist out of their 5.4 litres. That’s backed up by a five-speed automatic with manual mode and a limited-slip pumpkin in back.
The seller says this one comes with 155,000 “highway” miles on the clock and dealer service records from day one. He has a clean title “in hand” and is only offering the car because he wants to buy an SUV. Now that’s a sad trombone moment without a doubt, but his loss is going to be somebody’s gain and at $8,200, we now need to see how big a gain that could be.
The offer is extended to bring a mechanic to look over the car and diagnose any obvious issues, so perhaps that $8,200 asking is just a starting point—an amuse-bouche for the negotiations as it were.
With that in mind, how good a starting point is that? Would you go $8,200 for this E55 if it comes with a clean bill of health? Or, no matter what the mechanical diagnoses, is that just too high a bill?
You decide!
Houston, TX Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don L on the Twitter for the hookup!
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