Great automotive value for money is something I will never shut up about, and near the top of my list will always be the Mercedes S-Class, namely this immaculate 2006 S65 AMG, with a crazy big engine with crazy big power, with a crazy low price. It's either this, or a fully loaded Honda Civic. Your choice.
This 2006 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG is so underrated in the used car market that I've written about it twice before. This '06 is the last year of the W220, which means that the German automaker got most, if not all of the kinks out of this technological leviathan. Its 604-horsepower twin turbocharged V12 engine is a freak of nature, delivering an earth-crumbling 738 ft-lbs of torque, bone stock, with lots of room for modifications, if you're a masochist and want to watch the world burn. With the stock limiter taken off, it will get to 200 miles per hour. And heat your butt at the same time.
The car looks to be in great condition, with around 80,000 miles on the odometer and a clean vehicle history report. All options are ticked, other than the four-seater option, and rear heated/ventilated seats. But who cares about the people in the rear? Their heads will be glued to the headrests whenever the fast pedal gets welded to the floor on an off-ramp. I did notice that the shift knob was missing, but that's an easy fix.
I had an S600, which is a detuned version of this car. It's worth it in so many ways that I'd give my hands a serious case of carpal tunnel if I typed everything out in detail. Yes, it can be expensive to fix, especially if something goes wrong with the ABC hydropneumatic system, and the engine's coil packs are expensive at $1500 apiece (there are two), but barring those, and considering that this was originally a car that commanded a $200,000 MSRP, it makes sense that you'd have to pay a bit more to be able to blow the doors off of any Ferrari or Lamborghini made in the '90s. It's worth checking out at the very least.
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world's cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he's the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn't feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.
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