Me and my neighbor, of whom is a great car guy, told me the best MB ever made was the 1995 E500. he also told me that only 400 were made in 1995. he went on to say that the 1995 E500 will smoke any 2007 __________ u fill in the blank....car on the punch. i am just curious.
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3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.
Note that the production is for Calendar year and not Product year. Production started at the Porsche Rossle-Bau facility in Zuffenhausen in Sept 1990 and ended January 1995. There are no US 1995 E500s according to MB Germany. There are a few Canadian ones. The rest are German, Japanese or Middle East.
Me and my neighbor, of whom is a great car guy, told me the best MB ever made was the 1995 E500. he also told me that only 400 were made in 1995. he went on to say that the 1995 E500 will smoke any 2007 __________ u fill in the blank....car on the punch. i am just curious.
The last 500Es [actually called E500 by 94] were no different than the others in performance. The last cars in Europe were fitted with 17" EVO lightweight wheels. The only real performance difference in US cars was that the 1992 has 7HP more that 93-94 cars due to a throttle change in the ECU. European cars that do not have CATS have 10 or so additional HP [and weigh less accordingly].
Otherwise, the differences are cosmetic and go along with many of the same differences that occurred with the rest of the line [grill and headlight changes].
As for performance, I put the 500Es 322HP and 354 lbft of Torque up there with many of the best but times have changed and we are now seeing AMG cars with 400-500 and 600HP. I drove an S65 a bit back and its 600HP and Torque are mind numbing in such a big car. I just can't figure out how to get that motor/tranny/ECU in my project 500E.
I'd be a bit wary of advice from someone whose "best car ever made" doesn't even exist.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the VERY LATE 1994 production cars ended up marketed as 1995s. We have pretty good tracking on a good percentage of the cars but I could see Benz having a stock of them an VINing them as 95s at some point. I don't know if any made it to the US.
The facility that made the 500E made the Porsche 959 just prior to the 500E and did the Audi RS2 Avant as the 500E was finishing up production.
In some performance aspects the new BlueTec Diesel will give the 500E a good run but in build quality of the car, not even close. The new 211 chassis cars will be recycled into Camry bumpers while the 124 chassis will still be going. Even with known rust areas on the 500Es, and there are two that count that body is stronger than any of the newer cars.
After Katrina I bought a 93 500E [The Katrina Project] and a 2002 S600, both which had been submerged for a week, right next to each other. I bought the cars in April 06 [7 months later] and brought them to Kentucky. Both cars sat another three months before any work could be done on either.
When we started stripping the two cars down, we found that the S600 was rusted to the point that we were only able to salvage some suspension parts, some engine parts and some other small parts. All of the chassis and body parts were rusted beyond salvage.
The 500E [which had 220,000 miles], on the other hand was stripped down to base components. We lost all electronics, wiring, interior and transmission as expected but the body and motor are still solid as a rock. Only rust was on a place in the right rear fender area where a fender bender had not been fixed correctly in the past. That got fixed, the entire chemically cleaned and resealed and that body is ready for another 250,000 miles.
We just about broke even on the S600. The 500 is being built into the Shop's showcase car, with tweaks.
Keep us posted on the 500E project, it sounds promising! And yeah I agree with you on the build quality of the 124's, they would last longer than any of the cars built 2000 to present day.
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