Mercedes-Benz E-Class 500E

There's a category of car you only understand once you know what's lurking under the bonnet. Take the W124. A meek looking saloon, a taxi in real life, the darling of accountants and GPs happy to rack up the miles. Sober German solidity, built to survive half a million kilometres and only then start to warm up a little. The kind of car nobody gives a second glance. And that is precisely where the joke lies.

Because in the early '90s, Mercedes-Benz had a problem. The M5 was out there, BMW's straight-sixes were snarling, and Stuttgart had nothing to fire back with. So they rang the neighbours. Not just any neighbours: Porsche, in Zuffenhausen. And there, in the halls where they normally screw 911s together, the ordinary E-Class was unscrewed and re-educated into something that on paper was still called a saloon but in practice absolutely was not.

The 500E. Hand-built at Porsche, with a 5.0 V8 pressing 326 bhp beneath that respectable bonnet. The body had to go wider, the wings were flared out to house the fatter tyres, and the whole thing dropped a couple of centimetres closer to the tarmac. The production process was so convoluted that each car literally travelled back and forth between Mercedes and Porsche twice. Eighteen days of build time per unit. That's not a car, that's a craft with number plates.

And the best part? The man in the street never noticed. No wings, no stickers, no shouty exhausts. Only those slightly broader hips gave away that something special was standing there. The ultimate Q-car, decades before the term existed. You could park it outside the opera without anyone glancing over, and at the same time make every young hothead at the traffic lights and on the motorway junction vanish into nothing. BWWRAAAAP and gone. Meanwhile the driver glanced in the mirror with the same expression as a butler taking your coat.

Right, back to the 500E gleaming here in front of you. Brilliantsilver Metallic, colour code 744, and that is exactly the colour this car belongs in: understated, cool, a touch anonymous. Beneath the bonnet sits the complete 5.0 V8 with 326 bhp mated to the automatic. Four seats, because the rear bench got two individual buckets, precisely as it should be in a car that is really a sports car in disguise. Leather upholstery, Michelin summer tyres in the original 225/55 R16 size.

This particular 500E began its life in 1992 abroad and came to the Netherlands in 2007. What pleases me most: the complete Mercedes-Benz Wartungsheft is present and filled in. Delivery at Fahrzeug-Werke Lueg in Bochum, faithfully maintained for years at Auto-Kryst in Hattingen, and after the import neatly stamped onwards by Dutch specialists in Hoogland, Waalwijk and for years at Rüttchen in Breda.

A thick booklet full of stamps, from kilometre 1,952 well into the thousands. That sort of paperwork is worth its weight in gold with a 500E, because this is simply not a car where you quickly swap the spark plugs yourself without hurting your fingers.

Granted, it is 34 years old and that means love. A car of this calibre you want to maintain the way you have an old Rolex serviced: on time, by someone who knows what he's doing. And that should come as no surprise after three and a half decades. But what you get back is one of the most underrated Mercedes ever built, with a pedigree that literally starts in Zuffenhausen.

The 500E has by now become a sought-after classic, and not without reason. It's the car for the connoisseur who knows that the most impressive speed is the speed nobody sees coming. No poser material, no Instagram object, just a saloon that runs harder than most things with a spoiler.

Porsche built it, Mercedes put its name on it, the first true super saloon.

Special features

• 5.0 V8 with 326 bhp, hand-built at Porsche in Zuffenhausen
• Brilliantsilver Metallic (colour code 744)
• Complete and fully stamped Mercedes-Benz Wartungsheft present
• Maintained at Auto-Kryst (Hattingen) and for years at Rüttchen (Breda)
• Leather upholstery, four individual seats
• In the Netherlands since 2007

Written in a grey suit with a poker face at the traffic lights

Nick Slinger

Copywriter · HooG Selections