Originally Posted by Jim B.

Hello Nick,

Thank you VERY much for the detailed response and reply and those pictures too. Never mind about the skeptics, about the car, you have provben them wrong, and frankly there are a few people who can get downright ugly around here sometimes. Jealousy? Brains of a flatfish?
Who knows? Never mind about it.

As to the car again, they are quite light in the rear end, and I too, remember
the first time I floored mine going up a wet hill in San Francisco, the car completely washed out, and I almost went totally sideways in the rain. It's a weak point with these things.

20 mpg is brilliant for a car like this. I never topped 18 mpg with mine,
and it isn't even a 6.0L. They demand premium gas, (Chevron with techron is the best) and if you give it to them, you won't have to worry about the injectors. The high idle can be a problem with these, but they should be at about 600-700 rpm when you are at idle.....

Your car is unquestionably authentic, and original, and while I won't ask what it cost you, being a 2nd generation AMG euro ECE, it is absolutely the best one to have even BEFORE AMG got hold of it. The ECE engine was the highest performing factory 560 motor made for Germany, it came out of the factory without cats, and gave 300 hp.

Since yours has the 6.0L DOHC 4 valve, that was the highest performing AMG engine they made (there were four choices and this was the top one). Whoever bought this car and took it to AMG wanted the best of the best.
Since it is a 1988, it is last generation car, with upgraded interior and exterior, and more desirable than the early 1982-1985 ones.

AMG claimed the 6.0 liter 4V at 365 hp, which was their hottest setup, and real fast for a car like this back in the day. You could dyno it to see exactly what it gives you....

Basically what you have is like having the Yenko equivalent of a 560SEC!!!
Very rare, very fast, very covetable.

It is believed that no more than 200 6.0L AMG engines were made (they were bored out 560 blocks).

Since the gray market collapsed in the USA in 1986, due in part because of the exchange rate ($ to Deutschmark) and Mercedes introducing the 560 engine, in part to combat the sales loss from Americans demanding power and putting AMG conversions into the 500 engine) your car is VERY rare; there are not many authentic 560SEC AMG cars at all, since each would be a 1986 or up.

There are some, but many are fakes and clones.

For perspective, depending on what AMG modifications were ordered, back in the day the 560SEC and 560SEL AMG packages typically cost from $20,000 $100,000 or more over the price of the new car itself.

Also, many owners today are wanting to create clones of these cars for themselves, so AMG body kits, steering wheels, dash guages, Monoblocks, Penta wheels, badges, tri-Y headers, fire extinguishers, and the like are VERY hard if not impossible to find, at ANY price, and they are very, very, expensive. And, you have all that stuff, already. Consider, people are really fighting and trying to buy those parts individually, and can't get them.

Your car has only the wall to wall tailight aftermarket option, that did NOT come from AMG. It was a readily available aftermarket modification. Few people bought them.

I don't blame you if you don't want to reveal the serial number now. No worries, here is the free Russian website you can run the VIN# in get a list of the original configuration of the car and what options it had:

http://www.mbclub.ru/mb/vin/?lng=eng

People would be interested here if you could share what came out.....

The bad news is that AMG in the 1980s was just a tuning firm, and had stores in USA, Canada, Europe, England and elsewhere. However, each one operated on its own, and no records exist before 1990, unfortunately.

It was bought out and absorbed into Mercedes Benz in the early 1990s, and the C36 AMG is the first Mercedes built "AMG" that came out of the Mercedes factory, as a W202 model.

Amazingly, there is a car up for sale advertised as a 560 SEC AMG, a 1990 model. It is even plated from the same Canadian province yours came on, and looks very much like yours, even to the window tints, wall to wall taillights, exhaust tips and wheels. However, look carefully on the trunk, the AMG script is wrong, it is the new ///AMG script not the A M G letters like yours , which are correct. Look also, carefully atthe gauges on the dash.
It has the NEW "///AMG" and NOT the "A M G" marking on the dashboard
like yours surely does.

It is a euro, and the German writing on the cruise control stalk that you can see in the picture, below, proves it. Cars destined for the USA had that writing in English on them.

The car is nice, but it is a just an AMG CLONE! It looks good but he is not saying it is a clone, and I am not a detective but I can recognize a clone when I see one.

The pictures don't lie. What is the difference between a cloned Yenko and a genuine Yenko? It's being falsely represented as something it is not, to raise the price.

The car was insured for $35,000 and he is asking $25,000 for it. BUT it had 59,000 miles on it (95,000 kms) NOT 4,500 kms like yours, either.

I would like to see a close up of the "AMG ENGINEERING" badge on your car. I have never heard of these, or seen one before...If you have pictures of the AMG paperwork, it would be neat to see that too. Especilly it would be interesting to learn which AMG dealer worked on your car.

Thank you for sharing the story and the pictures. It is always interesting to learn more about these great cars. The more we learn, the better!

Hope it went very very well with the girl, also.

Here are a couple of pictures of the clone: