Once upon a time, the entire world conspired to make the perfect sedan. It was designed by an Italian
who was obsessed with safety. It was engineered by Germans who were infatuated with fuel economy.
It had a Le Mans-winning V-8, strangely because the Japanese had just finally "arrived" in America...
and it was so fat it didn't fit down its own production line. So it needed to be hand built
by rivals across town. It was the Mercedes-Benz 500E. And it is the world's most perfect sedan.
By the mid-1970s, Mercedes had twice put an unconscionably large V-8 in its S-class.
The first was 6.3 liters of "shut up, hippie!"
The second was a 6.9-liter middle finger issued right in the middle of a fuel crisis. And yet despite these childish acts of defiance, Mercedes' image remained
old and stodgy.
Ironically, that very fuel crisis sent Mercedes into an existential tailspin that resulted in twins! The sub-compact W201 and compact W124 sedans rescued Mercedes from
the past and catapulted it to defining the future of the automobile. Thanks to looming U.S. fuel economy
regulations, Mercedes threw its entire engineering might behind its compact twins — which would also
use a new family of fuel efficient four-, five-, and six-cylinder engines. And then Mercedes found an
Italian to make them look like the future. Bruno Sacco's design was revolutionary, though it may
not look it now, because every sedan since has been modeled after these cars: integrated bumpers,
flush headlights, tail lights on the body with a trunk opening that dipped below them. It also had
a wedge-shaped high trunklid for aerodynamics. And something else: its rear was tapered like a
teardrop. It may look like an upright square box to the eye, but not to the air: with a coefficient of drag
as low as 0.26, the W124 is one of the most aerodynamically efficient sedans of all time.
This was designed in the 1970s! These cars looked like spaceships when they debuted
because everything else on the road looked like this! Thing about Bruno Sacco is that he had just
come from Mercedes' safety department. So while his stated goal was to create a design that would stay
relevant for three decades, his actual target was at the confluence of design, efficiency, and safety.
So, Sacco's cars included innovations like the mesmerizing articulating single wiper.
It covered a record-breaking 86 percent of the windshield, but its arm stayed parallel
to the airflow at all times so the blade didn't lift off the glass on the Autobahn.
And ribbed taillights designed so that they still transmit light when they're covered with snow or mud.
And rear headrests that drop down at the press of a button so you didn't back over your neighbor's kid (by accident.)
By the end of the 1980s, Mercedes was basking in its huge success, with Yuppies
everywhere fawning all over their expensive over-engineered status symbols. But with the new decade
came a new crisis, and its name was Lexus.
Lexus stunned the world with a flagship that was, in almost all respects, better than the Mercedes S-Class — and it cost half as much!
Less, even, than the six-cylinder 300E! Poof! There went a quarter of Mercedes-Benz's U.S. sales, overnight!
A desperate plea came in from Mercedes North America:
[off screen] "Hey Krauts! Throw a v8 in that thing or we're never going to be able to sell another one!"
Good idea, but remember this was a fuel crisis vehicle: it was designed for skinny little four- five- and six-cylinder engines. And Mercedes' obsession with
safety meant the frame rails were placed close to the center of the engine compartment to protect
you in an offset crash. Way ahead of its time, but a big, wide V-8 was never gonna fit. And with Mercedes
engineers so busy trying to figure out how to beat Lexus with the next S-Class, they just didn't have
the time to mess with the old 124. But you know who did? Porsche! Three things to remember:
Porsche and Mercedes are both headquartered in Stuttgart: they're like walking distance away from each other.
See? Secondly Porsche was in huge trouble, with U.S. sales down by almost 90 percent!
They were desperate for money and work. And third, Porsche has an engineering consulting service.
So Mercedes walked right over and hired Porsche to fit the new Mercedes V-8 into the 124.
Porsche Engineering would be responsible for widening the front frame rails to make room;
reinforcing the firewall and structure to deal with the extra power; moving the front seats further apart
to fit the exhaust down the new, wider transmission tunnel; and then doing the side-impact crash testing.
Meanwhile, the new V-8, codenamed M119, had just made its production car debut in the 500SL...
and then immediately won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 1989 Sauber C9 used a twin-turbo,
925-horsepower version of that engine, and it took first, second, and fifth places in that race!
Mercedes tested the engines after the endurance race and found out that not only did they make
more power after the race than they did before, they showed negligible wear. You can't make this
stuff up. Anyway, the M119 came in two different sizes, and Mercedes realized that if they put
shorter connecting rods in it, the 5.0-liter could be made to have the same external dimensions as
the 4.2 liter... Which meant that Porsche's engineering could be used for two models:
The first would be the 400E, designed for the American market to compete against another car
with 400 in its name: yeah, the Lexus LS400. The second model was aimed right at Munich, with the
full-fat 5-liter to banish the sport sedan that had been giving Mercedes Autobahn Agita for years: the BMW M5.
This big-bore, short-stroke all-aluminum V-8 is a masterpiece.
The block is decades old but the heads were all-new with 4 valves per cylinder, 4 camshafts, and variable valve timing.
It made supercar power — but there was a problem. A big, fat problem.
To complement all that power, Mercedes gave the 500E suspension, wheel, and brake components from
the heavier and wider (R129) SL. To fit that stuff, the 500E got 2.2 inches of delicious, gorgeous
finger-licking fender flares.
And now it was so fat it didn't fit down its own production line at the Mercedes plant!
Once again, Porsche to the rescue! The factory that had been building the 959 supercar was sitting empty,
and so Mercedes paid Porsche again — this time to build the 500E.
Mercedes would ship over a 300E body-in-white, which Porsche would then modify to fit the V-8.
It sent the reinforced body back over to Mercedes for paint.
If it was to be a narrow-body 400E, it would continue down the production line at Mercedes.
If it was to be a 500E, it would be trucked back to a different plant at Porsche along with a big box of parts.
Then, Porsche would assemble it all into a car and send it back to Mercedes again for final inspection and delivery.
This absurd process took 18 days, and it is one of the reasons this thing was so expensive.
In 1992, it cost $89,000!
That was 35% more than a BMW M5 — and in today's terms, that's nearly Bentley money. For a compact!
The outrageously hot Audi RS2 wagon was built in the same factory. Which meant for a short time, you
could actually see Mercedeses and Audises coming out of the same Porsche factory together. But while
the RS2 was genuinely a Porsche-Audi collaboration, the 500E... wasn't! Everyone wants to believe that the
500E was a Porsche sports sedan but the only Porsche part on it is the battery cover which
has a sticker on it from a supplier saying that Porsche bought it from them. Look, Porsche did the
engineering to bolt parts from one Mercedes model onto another Mercedes model. Porsche didn't use any
of its own parts, and from all I can tell, had no hand in tuning any of them. But here's the thing:
Mercedes didn't need any help.
Just about every magazine article declared the 500E the best car in the world.
"Automobile" said it three times in one article.
Car and Driver had literally no complaints other than the price.
I agree. This is a car from back when Mercedes engineers outranked Mercedes accountants.
And that means that a Mercedes would be priced based on what it cost to engineer and then produce, not the other way around.
That's why they say — and they really used to mean — that a Mercedes-Benz is engineered like no other car in the world.
Because it was.
Its recirculating-ball steering is more talkative than any modern cars, Porsche and Ferrari included.
The engine is a torquey, revvy, acoustical masterpiece. The structure feels as stiff as anything today. The interior is... perfect.
Okay, it's not perfect. It starts out in second gear unless you boot it,
and then the traction control hates burnouts — but both of those things can be fixed. So effectively
what we have here is the best compact sedan in the world, upgraded with four Recaro bucket seats,
flared fenders, and a Le Mans-winning V-8 under its hood. But no Le Mans speeds because the 500E was
electronically limited to 156 mph as per the gentleman's agreement between BMW and Mercedes.
I've heard people say all over the world this car will do 178 mph if you just remove the limiter.
No. It would require hardware changes for the 500E to go faster than 156 mph and that's because
Mercedes chose a final drive ratio such that the engine is at its 6000-rpm redline when the
car is at its 156-mph top speed. To go any faster, you'd need longer gears. But by choosing
the short gear ratio it decimated fuel economy (ironic, given that the 124 was originally designed
for fuel economy) but it means that Mercedes never sacrificed acceleration in the name of MPGs. And so,
despite only four gears and a slushbox, the 500E hit 60 mph in five and a half seconds,
blasted through the quarter mile at 101 mph, and left the E34 BMW M5 for dead
— and not just in a straight line! The Mercedes out-braked and out-cornered the M-Car, too.
The 500E (and the E500, as it was badged in its final year) have gotten a lot more enthusiast attention than any of the
big-motor Benzes that came before it, and I don't think it's because it was touched by the hands
of Porsche — so was the 400E, and you don't care about that car! No, I think it's for three reasons:
Number one: this is not a full-size luxury car. It's a compact car — it's the size of today's Honda Civic.
Two: the 6.3 and 6.9 were basically cushy luxury sedans with a jet pack strapped to the back.
This was a comprehensive rethink of a luxury car with intergalactic power — that had handling to match.
And Three: the 500E is a W124, and the 124 has a well-earned reputation at being
perhaps the best-engineered best-proportioned, best-designed, longest-lasting sedan of all time.
They say, "it takes a village," and in the case of the 500E, it took Mercedes brain power,
Italian design, American fuel economy regs, Japanese competition, and then Porsche's engineering.
So, it took more than just a village: it took half the world — including two car
companies that were in the same village. But all of those forces came together to create what was
certainly then, and probably still is today, the world's most perfect sedan.
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