The 500E, Porsche's First Sedan

During Concours week a couple of months ago in Monterey, I was stopped at a red light. In front of me, at first glance, was a pedestrian Mercedes W124 with two well-to-do country club boomer types in it. I looked at its rear license plate frame, which strangely just read "Porsche Mercedes". Strange.
Then I looked at the trunk lid badge-- 500E. I remember reading about this Teutonic oddity in a Car & Driver when I was in high school. Never, in all those years (15) had I seen one in person.

In the early 90s, Porsche was not doing too hot. Its lineup included the perennial 911 and the aging 928 and 944. With the 959 discontinued, part of Porsche's Rossle-Bau plant in Zuffenhausen was idle. Mercedes, which at that time was aggressively churning out a new model every year, was overextended and did not have the capacity, nor the time, to turn its W124 sedan into an uber-sedan to compete with the E34 M5.

Mercedes turned to Porsche. The sports car maker shoehorned the 5 liter engine from the 500SL under the W124's bonnet. An extra 22 pound feet of torque was extracted. The engine bay was widened and reinforced. The engine was moved as far back as possible to optimize balance. Heavy duty suspension bits and other performance upgrades, along with wider fender flares, completed the transformation. The 500E was hand built and each car took 18 days to complete, during which it was transported back and forth between the Mercedes and Porsche factories.

The final result: 322 horsepower, 354 pound feet of torque, zero to 100 km/h in 5.5 seconds. Only 1,505 units ended up in the States. With Porsche's personal touch, this was the last great uber-Benz. Since then, everyone and their accountant's wives have been driving uninspired, bland, commodified, and superficially appealing AMGs with stupid torque and useless horsepower. Too bad, that.

CKY