E320 Cabriolet History

[Joseph Walker]

Does anyone have the history of the 1993-1995 E320 cabriolet. From what I can gather, assembly began in the Mercedes-Benz factory, and then the car was shipped to another company for the cabriolet option. It was then shipped back to Mercedes for final assembly. Any information will be helpful.

Thank you in advance!

[Jim B.]

That was the case with the W124 500E, from Mercedes Benz at Stuttgart to Porsche at Zuffenhausen, and back to Stuttgart, but I had no idea something similar to this happened with the W124 Cabrio also .

The W124 cabrio AND the W124 500E are both equisitely desirable vehicles!

Anybody know about whether this is true with the cabrios, they were built in two stages, as suggested above?

[gmercoleza]

I've never heard of that. I'm familiar with the setup for the 500Es as mentioned earlier.

FWIW, Toyota used to do the same thing with the Solara (farmed out to American Sunroof if I'm not mistaken). Build quality was very poor until they brought the whole process in-house.

[koop]

This is probably wrong but I seem to remember that MB shipped them to a company in Finland that did the convertible. Same company that does the convertible for SAAB.

[Jim B.]

And also, wasn't the late unlamented Cadillac Allante built in Detroit, then flown to Italy to pick up its body then flown back to Detroit?

And, wasn't there some sort of ill fated buy back program with them, flogged against the 560SL, something about the company was absolutely sure the customer would NEVER want to have a 560SL instead of an Allante, they would buy back the Allante if the owners wanted a 560SL later, but it turns out many owners DID, and the program whatever it was had to be dropped, Cadillac dropped a bundle into that program and had to quietly drop it?

And something similar with the mid 1980 Chrysler TC Maserati convertible?

(I'm not sure of either of these, but I think they were both made in Italy and the USA....?)