Growing up, I never gave much thought to Mercedes sedans. Heads of state were riding in those huge 600 saloons and open parade cars, but all around me were chunky short wheelbase sedans, many with noisy smokey diesels. The 3.0 liter 6, so dominant in early '50s sports cars was really obsolete to power a full sized sedan. By 1966, with sedan sales flagging, the engineers began working on taking the 600's 6.3 fuel injected V8 and replacing the 3.0 6 in a long wheelbase chassis (W109). All of a sudden, I started seeing these powerful elegant sedans popping up all over the Metropolitan area by the early '70s. The 6.3 with the 4 speed automatic produced 300 hp with 434 flbs of torque giving the car 0-60 in 6.6 sec and allowed for all day cruising at 124mph making it very competitive with American high-powered luxury cars. Standard was air suspension, 4 wheel discs, power everything, AC, and power sunroof... along with a slew of optional amenities. 6500of this 1st generation V8 sedan were built between 1068 and 1972. 2nd gen offered a 6.9 L V8 and other upgrades. The two Mercedes engineers that opened up their own shop as AMG got a hold of a couple of these 300SELs and had brief successes before rule changes with their 6.8 L V8 that produced 429 hp... known as the Rote Sau (red sow).
Growing up, I never gave much thought to Mercedes sedans. Heads of state were riding in those huge 600 saloons and open parade cars, but all around me were chunky short wheelbase sedans, many with noisy smokey diesels. The 3.0 liter 6, so dominant in early '50s sports cars was really obsolete to power a full sized sedan. By 1966, with sedan sales flagging, the engineers began working on taking the 600's 6.3 fuel injected V8 and replacing the 3.0 6 in a long wheelbase chassis (W109). All of a sudden, I started seeing these powerful elegant sedans popping up all over the Metropolitan area by the early '70s. The 6.3 with the 4 speed automatic produced 300 hp with 434 flbs of torque giving the car 0-60 in 6.6 sec and allowed for all day cruising at 124mph making it very competitive with American high-powered luxury cars. Standard was air suspension, 4 wheel discs, power everything, AC, and power sunroof... along with a slew of optional amenities. 6500of this 1st generation V8 sedan were built between 1068 and 1972. 2nd gen offered a 6.9 L V8 and other upgrades. The two Mercedes engineers that opened up their own shop as AMG got a hold of a couple of these 300SELs and had brief successes before rule changes with their 6.8 L V8 that produced 429 hp... known as the Rote Sau (red sow).
That is a DDG model of a beautiful 1:1 automotive masterpiece built when MBZ was at the top of their game.
Very nice ! I know SunStar did a real nice Platinum version of the Mercedes quite a while back, but I think it was a big 1/18 limo version. I am not familiar with this sedan version.
Sunstar did a beautiful 2-dr hardtop similar to this sedan.
I believe it's a 280..?
The one I had was silver with a sliding sunroof. I don't remember the interior color but it even had an open grill up front that you could see through it was beautiful.
It was done in the Platinum series.
Steve
There's one on the bay, in blue, for ONLY $323 !!
And yes, they did the big limo.
I had that too. Not a bad model for the price 20yrs ago.
Growing up, I never gave much thought to Mercedes sedans. Heads of state were riding in those huge 600 saloons and open parade cars, but all around me were chunky short wheelbase sedans, many with noisy smokey diesels. The 3.0 liter 6, so dominant in early '50s sports cars was really obsolete to power a full sized sedan. By 1966, with sedan sales flagging, the engineers began working on taking the 600's 6.3 fuel injected V8 and replacing the 3.0 6 in a long wheelbase chassis (W109). All of a sudden, I started seeing these powerful elegant sedans popping up all over the Metropolitan area by the early '70s. The 6.3 with the 4 speed automatic produced 300 hp with 434 flbs of torque giving the car 0-60 in 6.6 sec and allowed for all day cruising at 124mph making it very competitive with American high-powered luxury cars. Standard was air suspension, 4 wheel discs, power everything, AC, and power sunroof... along with a slew of optional amenities. 6500of this 1st generation V8 sedan were built between 1068 and 1972. 2nd gen offered a 6.9 L V8 and other upgrades. The two Mercedes engineers that opened up their own shop as AMG got a hold of a couple of these 300SELs and had brief successes before rule changes with their 6.8 L V8 that produced 429 hp... known as the Rote Sau (red sow).
That is a DDG model of a beautiful 1:1 automotive masterpiece built when MBZ was at the top of their game.
I'm sorry but I can't help posting this and laughing at the same time but I didn't know that Mercedes-Benz was producing such a big and powerful sedan back in 1068 !
