: A beige Fiesta Mk1 (first car), various boring Fords, Lancia Delta HF Turbo, Golf GTi Mk2, Lancia Delta Integrale, among others. Current fleet also includes a '62 Jaguar Mk2, a '98 Mercedes SLK and a Mercedes 190 E 1.8 that runs on LPG.
I suppose the main reason is that I've been working as a parts bloke and dealing with Mercedes for 22 years - and the 500E was the first Merc that really grabbed my attention when it was first launched. I thought: one day I'll have one of these.
That finally happened when I spotted this car languishing on eBay. I think it scared people off, because it's not the sort of thing you normally see on eBay (it's a bit too 'niche'), it was coming up for Christmas, and there were 312,000 kilometres on the clock.
But it had oodles of paperwork (admittedly a lot of that was in German as this was originally a German-market car) and the previous owner was a serious barrister-type who clearly lavished it with time, care and money. In the end I paid just under £8K for it.
At some point it has been changed in spec to resemble the later E500 (including new body work) so it isn't quite what you would call original, but that doesn't matter to me.
What I wish I'd known:
Nothing, really. Because of what I do (ThreePointedParts.co.uk, by way of a bit of a plug for you - Riggers) I know my way around the Mercedes parts back catalogue, and I can get parts and labour sorted cheaply. But even if you weren't in my fortunate position you wouldn't find parts too much of a problem, as the 500E is all off-the-shelf bits.
I also wish I'd known how much fun it would be. I would have bought one sooner.
As a package it's practical, fun and enormously fast. Its overtaking ability is huge (a 326hp 5.0-litre V8 will do that for you) and for me the left-hand-drive thing is never an issue
That Porsche-built pedigree is a massive part of the appeal, too. I also prefer the idea of it to the AMG stuff of the time and, while I had toyed with a 400E, in the end I decided that that was just a W124 with a big engine, whereas this is something a bit different. A bit special.
Things I hate:
Filling it up with fuel - at current prices it takes about £115-worth on a full tank, which is pretty full-on. But other than that I can't really think of anything.
Apart from fuel, it's only been the usual routine maintenance, tax and insurance, none of which have been too bad. Tax isn't horrendous, insurance is cheap (around £300 because I'm old and keep it to a 5000-mile limit) and because nothing is bespoke the parts aren't too pricey. I did have to spend around £270 on a pair of rear tyres, though.
Where I've been:
I've not been on any trips abroad in it, but a hoon around the Brecon Beacons was great fun, and it's been with me to various car meets and Sunday Services.
I could use it as a daily driver, but the LPG 190 is really the daily hack so that lets me keep the 500E as an 'occasion' car.
I did toy with selling it for a while, but that was in winter, and when I didn't really have the cash to tax it - I've got over that now! Besides, there's nothing I could really replace it with. Sure, there's plenty of other cars I could buy (and I am a serial car buyer), but nothing really matches the Merc's extraordinary blend of abilities. Which is why I'm keeping it for the foreseeable future!