Mercedes-Benz 500SL: Spotted

Old enough for classic insurance, modern enough still to be used and it's only £10K...

It could be argued that Christmas time is not the best time of the year to be buying any car, leave alone a cabriolet. The weather is miserable, the days are dark and the money should most likely be spent on other things; December is not the month for indulgent drop-top purchases.

And this is a car from 1991!

Or is it? The seller will surely want to get the car gone given the time of the year, meaning you as the buyer are in a stronger negotiating position. And being purely rational for a sec, you're perhaps less likely to accept flaws on a cabrio buying it in the winter than seeing it top down on a summer's day.

That being said, to find any flaws on this Mercedes SL would be very surprising indeed. It's worth reading the whole advert to understand why (as it's very entertaining) but, essentially, this car has had a decent chunk of money spent on it very recently at the SL Shop and is looking fantastic for it. The work has included a lot of freshening up underneath, all detailed and of course saving the next owner the hassle.

Moreover, it was a very desirable specification of R129-generation Mercedes SL already. As one of the earlier cars - this very one is a quarter of a century old now - it's a 500SL and not a SL500, but also has the orange indicators, the two-tone paint and the earlier design of alloy wheel. For a car designed in the mid-1980s it still looks remarkably good, and this particular example wears its 135,000 miles very well.

There are many reasons why you might want this generation of SL, not least its design, the famed build quality and a very nice V8 engine too. Conveniently enough a detailed ownership thread has been written by PHer Adam917K on a very similar car - see here and prepare to want an SL quite a lot!

Sit and admire that build quality

Interestingly though SLs don't yet appear to have reached the heady heights of other classic German metal, although they do seem to be going in that direction. When we last wrote about the SL (nearly three years ago now, in fact), decent V8 cars could be had for around £5,000. That isn't possible now, but £10,995 for this car with thousands recently spent still looks good value; you can pay a bit less for a V8, and a fair bit more too. Think of where similar cars of this era - Porsche 928 and BMW E24 6 Series, for example - have now reached and it would seem there's plenty of potential for SL values to climb, particularly as the car becomes older and rarer.

Why wouldn't you want this SL? Erm... Well it is one of the highest mileage cars available, and newer alternatives are available for similar money: think Jaguar XK, the later BMW 6 Series and even the R230 SL also. But if you do want a classic drop-top that still looks the part and could well have some investment potential, it's hard to think of much better than an SL.

MERCEDES 500SL
Engine: 4,973cc V8
Transmission: 4-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 320@5,600rpm
Torque (lb ft): 346@3,900rpm
MPG: 23 (est.)
CO2: 289g/km (est.)
First registered: 1991
Recorded mileage: 135,000
Price new: N/A
Yours for: £10,995