Mercedes Benz S320 LWB w140 Review

Mercedes w140 s class

My wife and I were planning on adopting (we wound up with three kids) and I knew I would
need a large car. I was currently leasing a 2011 BMW 3 series, with the lease ending in
October 2013. I love wagons but my wife hates them and I don't like sports utility
vehciles or minivans. I always wanted to own a Mercedes Benz so I started researching. I
decided to go with a w140 S class. I decided on a w140 because it was the last Benz
engineered without cost being considered. They say Mercedes invested 1 billion German
Marks to develop the w140 and that the Maybach is based on it's chassis.

The only must have was that I wanted a long wheelbase version. Though I really didn't
want black or a 12 cylinder.

It took me a long time to find a nice one. I looked at several local ones in the Dallas
area but none of them were well maintained or low milage. The best one I found was in
Florida, an s320. As luck would have it the alarm system in my Florida condo started
acting up so I HAD to go to FLorida. I check the car out and it's as nice as the seller
said it was. I bought it for $6,250. Champange exterior with a tan interior. Long
wheelbase with the 6 cylinder engine. A 1997 model with about 93,000 miles on it. And
since it was a 1997, it had a 5 speed automatic transmission and side impact airbags.
Downside was that it had a slight headgasket leak, which is common to these engines.

I drove it from Florida back to Texas without any problems whatsoever. Fantastic car for
long highway drives. Trip took 18 hours.

Seller included ALL documentation, so it was easy for me to come up with a maintenace
plan. I wound up changing the front and rear brake discs and pads, brake fluid, and
shocks (they didn't really need to be changed though). I had the local dealer change the
coolant, transmission fluid, fuel filter, and small plastic heater pipe behind the
engine. I added an iPod adapter to it.

The car was just great. Like having your own private jet. The best place was in the back
seat. I was able to sit back there when my wife drove. The car did have a suspension
clunk that came from the front driver side that I could never figure out and I never got
around to fixing the passenger side door check.

Sold it for $5,000 to buy my 911, so I lost $1,250 on it, not including parts and labor.

Original MSRP on the car was approximatly $67,000. I paid $6,250 which works out to be a
90.7% drop in the price over 15 years (a 1997 bought in 2012). So the car held 9.3% of
it's value after 15 years.

Now I'd like to compare this depriciation hit with that of a Porsche 993. The person that
bought this Mercedes could have bought a 993 for about the same price. The Mercedes
depriciated by 90.7% over 15 years, the 993 would have only depriciated about 50% over
the same amount of time. Amazing!