‘Tis the season of must-do-better resolutions and new gym memberships, but our first Pill of the ‘twenties has been chosen in deliberate opposition to such piety. With 215,000 miles covered in 23 years this brawny E55 AMG offers plenty of peril, but also serious potential reward underwritten by a four-grand price tag that makes it one of the cheapest V8-powered AMGs in the country.
That marks a level that non-crusty W210 E55s rarely sink to. It’s actually a grand less than the less sophisticated and less practical CLK 55 AMG that kicked off Brave Pill last February. Yet while the valuation reflects the fact this E-Class has covered more than a light-second of distance and is well into its third decade, the advert also offers several reasons to be optimistic.
Despite the huge mileage, mechanical wear is rarely a killer for E55s of this generation. The naturally-aspirated M113 V8 is enormously strong and having reached the double-ton suggests maintenance on our Pill hasn’t been skimped. True, much servicing seems to have been done in response to the MOT tester’s red pen, with an official history heavy with both advisories and a few fails. But the critical detail for experienced ‘nineties Merc buyers is what’s lacking from the published record – evidence of severe corrosion.
Rust is the big risk for any W210, the bug-eyed E-Class prone to outbreaks even more virulent than those which afflict its grot-prone contemporaries. Yet the strange thing has always been that some cars suffer and some don’t, with competing theories as to why this might be. Some reckon different colours are affected to differing degrees, others that only cars which made extensive use of Merc’s 30-year anti-perforation warranty early in life are now free of blight. Regardless, once tinworm has got its teeth into any W210 there’s no hiding the infestation: cars look like the “before” shot in acne cream adverts. But although eagle-eyed readers might spot some bubbling sub-surface corrosion near the tailgate lock slot – a very common point of failure – the rest of the car looks either unaffected or well repaired. The MOT history reports plenty of heavily worn suspension and brake components, but the only mentions of structural corrosion in the last five years are qualified with the reassuring prefix “slight”, and there were none at all for the last two certificates. Oh, and the current ticket expired in December, something the selling dealer will doubtless put right for the next buyer.
Although the E55 wasn’t the first car to follow Merc’s incorporation of the formerly independent AMG, it was the one that did most to get the new sub-brand properly noticed. Prior to its arrival there had been a very small number of six-cylinder E36 W210 models produced and sold in the UK. But when the E55 launched in 1998 it marked a new degree of seriousness in terms of both powertrain – a brawny 350hp version of Merc’s triple-valve V8 assembled by AMG in Affalterbach with various motorsport grade components. It had less power than the 400hp E39 BMW M5, but made more torque – 391 lb-ft compared to 369lb-ft – and delivered this at lower revs. It also sounded superb, V8-y and muscular, even with the conservative factory exhaust, and like a road-going NASCAR with a more permissive silencer.
With any AMG of this period there was a sense of buying the engine and getting the rest of the car for free. You know that road-test cliché about “shrinking around you”? The E55 did the opposite of that, always feeling at least as big and heavy as it actually was, with a conservative stability control system intervening early and hard in the event of any rear-end slip. Yet although the chassis was short on athleticism when compared to the M5, or even the Jaguar XJR it also got corralled into comparison tests with, the Merc was a superb long-distance cruiser.
I remember an E55 being invited to a magazine handling test in 1999, largely to make up the numbers and help to fill out the back of the group photograph. It spent much of its day sitting in the Oulton Park pitlane as attendant journos scrapped over time in lighter and sportier offerings, but there was some proper rank-pulling when it was time to hand out keys at kicking-out time, with the editor fighting off all challengers to nab the E55 for the trip back to London. The AMG’s muscularity, and the absolute linearity of the M113’s responses, gave it an effortlessness than the revvier, variably-timed M5 couldn’t quite match. There’s also more than enough torque to compensate for the sometimes slow reactions of the five-speed autobox.
Risks? There are still more than enough to make things interesting. Presuming the powertrain is still in fine fettle, it won’t be cheap to keep it there, with 16 spark plugs and eight coil packs plus a documented tendency for the torque converter to struggle at higher mileages. MPG will rarely rise above the teens, brakes, tyres and suspension components rarely live to a ripe old age. But while one of the leggiest examples out here, our Pill certainly seems to be wearing its trip-to-the moon mileage lightly. The leather seats bear the patina of many bottoms, but from the limited number of photographic angles the rest of the interior looks fresh. Few things wear huge miles as well as an E-Class and – having experienced German taxis with even higher odometer readings – there shouldn’t be any creaks or rattles.
The W210 E55 marked an early stage of the evolution of AMG from being an obscure tuner to the brightest diamond in Merc’s jewellery box. So it’s unsurprising that people are drawn more to the later and more exciting variants that followed it, something born out by the much sturdier values. It’s just two days since we highlighted a 6.2-litre W212 that looked like compelling value at £16,750. Our Pill is being sold for less than a quarter of that, but will offer much more than 25 percent of the experience.
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