What is a desirable color for a 500E?

They look great in all the colors

My personal favorite is Brilliant Silver with black interior.

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Glen Tokuhara
Beauty & the Beast and the wagon that could!

I like silver, and the light green one. I was told once that black (not the pearl black) is hard to find.

I agree!!

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Daily Driver: 02 E430 4MATIC
In the family: '03 E500 // '04 ML500 // 64 220SE

There is some crazy rumor going around that everyone seems to repeat, especially on ebay ads, that color code 040 black is rare, like only 10 examples were made.

Gerryvz over at www.500e.com has the complete archive of every 500E sold around the world, and there were quite a few 500E's , made in 040 black.

There are certainly quite a number of other colors that were made in smaller numbers.

For me, I think Almandine Red is the prettiest color I have ever seen.

I believe 199 pearl black is by far the most common color. I also have never understood why they call this color pearl black as it is really a charcoal gray metallic.

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".

I'll take a smoke silver with parchment interior to round out the stable,,,,, some day.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

My sig says it all, Signal Rot is probably the rarest of all the colors, although Gerry has not completed his database yet, so he has not been able to confirm that for sure.

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1993 500E
http://2phast.com/500e/500e-sig.jpg

That red is very nice. I 've only seen 1 other car advertised in that color.

I would say from a cursory look at the data I have completed, that the Signal Red, Nautical Blue and Arctic White colors are the rarest. If I had to put my finger on a single color, it would probably be the red or white though.

It will be interesting when all of this data shakes out, to have the exact numbers per color and such. It's gonna be a while -- so much data to transcribe from one hard-coded format into a database format which is queryable...

Cheers,
Gerry

My car's Garnet Red, the same as the 500E fetured recently in The Star. I think there are only maybe three in the US, but I cannot confirm this. I don't even like Red much, but I find this color quite appealing and unique. Originally it had a darker lower color, sort of an Oxblood, but I opted to change to one color, and I had the lower body sprayed with a satin clearcoat, as originally done by the factory.

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"If God had meant for us to walk, why did he give us feet that fit car pedals?" Sir Sterling Moss

Michael
2014 E63S Estate
2006 SLK55
1995 E500
1986 Porsche 944 turbo

I'm more looking at global color trends, less at US specific trends.

For example, the color "bornite" is MUCH more common on non-US cars than on cars imported to the US, same with 040 black.

But a good point. I always take with a grain of salt peoples' claims that their color is "one of X cars made" -- when I ask where they got the specific data, the claims usually are baseless. MBUSA cannot provide this information.

Really the only way to obtain it is to go through all 10,400+ records for the cars, which I am doing slowly over time.

Cheers,
Gerry

Gerry,

If you were to make a down-and-dirty top 10 most popular colors, what would they be?

If 040 black is not in the top 10, how does it rank compared to other colors?

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".

For what its worth, over the years, I have only seen proof of 6 signal red 500E's. I have not been keeping track of other more common colors, but of the blue, I have seen only 3 and of the Bornite, I have seen about 5. So the concept of there only being 3 Bornite 500E's in the US does not hold water, as Gerry stated previously, no one has that data except Gerry, not even MBUSA can provide it.

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1993 500E
http://2phast.com/500e/500e-sig.jpg

I think I posted an extrapolation based on the definitive records that I do have, to the BBS at 500E.com, last year. Don't know the thread any longer, but a search should find it.

Cheers,
Gerry

What do you think about this color?