Thinking about mid-90s 500SL

[chuck95e300d]

My wife and I are thinking about purchasing a mid-90s 500SL as a third car that we can both enjoy.

I've owned a number of Porsches over the years, but I've found with a manual transmission that I don't drive the Porsches enough because we have a long commute in DC beltway traffic, so we'd like something with an automatic transmission.

I read quite a bit about the SLs (using the search feature) but wanted to get the board's thoughts about these cars. I'm thinking about a 94-97 model. My daily driver is a 95 E300D, wife drives a Land Rover Discovery II (she's addicted and cannot be reformed). Currently I have 95 Porsche 968 convertible that is for sale.

I'd be interested to hear which year models we should consider or which to avoid. I know the later 90s models had improvements but our budget is limited to $25K or so. I'd like to find something with lower miles (perhaps up to 60K).

Thanks.

Chuck

[iwrock]

Hey buddy, I was in the same boat as you...

My dad and I were looking into getting an SL from the mid 90's as they have become more affordable, and they have all of the creaturre comforts one could expect from a Mercedes. I think you would be at home in a 1996 SL500. They have most of the updated styling, and they still have that Mercedes Quality. They also have most of the bugs worked out, as the M119 eingine had been out for just about 6 years at that point. You could probiblly find one with about 60,000 miles on it, and one owner. They also have the 5 speed automatic, and they have all of the saftey feature one could want like side airbags, ABS, and automatic deploying rollbar.

And when you are looking at an SL500, make sure that it doesn't have the damn Hydropneumatic suspension. If it does, run, run far away. They require some pricey maintainence if they have not been properly serviced.

Now, if you want the ultimate in power and speed, look into an SL600. It has what seems to be unlimited power, right on up to the rev limiter and the speed limiter. However, all the 600's are optioned out, so they can get pricey, really fast.

Just make sure that you get one with all of the records, and all of the maintainence done on time. We were lucky to have bought a corporate car, one that was owned by a corporation (not mentioning the name) who gave us all of the records for ever thing done to it. We couldnt be more happier with a car, especially one that everybody says come with problems galore.