You Could Own This Supercar Slaying V12 Mercedes S600 For Less Than $20k

Before going too deep into this Pandora’s box of cheap factory horsepower, there’s an elephant in the room to address. Older V12 German uber sedans aren’t exactly known for being easy to keep on the road, and I’m not just talking about their penchant for massive torque-fuelled powerslides. Maintenance is the key to keeping any car in top form, and when it comes to machines like this twin-turbocharged, 493bhp 2003 Mercedes-Benz S600, that doesn’t come cheap. Even for those who handle their own repairs, figure $1000 as your repair down payment for each time it goes under the knife. And it’s usually there quite often.

That’s why these Autobahn burners shed so much value as they age, but here’s the thing. If you can catch one of these machines at the right time, treated with the right care and offered at the right price, you can have a true supercar ownership experience for the same price as a new base-model Ford Focus. In America, that translates to around $18,000, and this particular S600 could be the special one that doesn’t eat your retirement fund for breakfast with repair bills every other Tuesday.

It’s listed as a great running, problem-free Benz with 88,000 miles, so there’s plenty of good life still to live with the big boosted V12. Photos show a meticulous Mercedes that’s gloriously free of fake AMG badging, and while it does come with a dealer-requisite price tag (because $17,999 is so much cheaper than $18,000) and some hyperbole in the description (not sure how one proves "no abuse"), the ad is really a great case study on how to properly present and a sell a car online—be it a $500 Pinto or a $500,000 Lambo.

Considering the 2003 S600 was well over $100,000 when new, and considering that this big, luxurious Benz will still run with everything short of the very latest crop of supercars, it’s a great performance purchase at $18,000—as long as there’s some maintenance paperwork to back up the tidy vehicle description. The fact that it’s an S600 with more buttons than the International Space Station makes the prices even more attractive. Even then, these cars are actually selling for a few thousand dollars less than advertised, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this car go for as little as $15,000.

Yeah, you can still buy other S600s for even less, but be prepared to turn right around and dump half as much right back into fixing something stupid like the oscillating strobe glove box radial sensor, which doesn’t do anything except cause the car to not start when leaving the midnight show from the local theatre.

Instead, pay just a bit more now, but still enjoy an honest-to-goodness 500 bhp supercar experience - just be sure to sell it before that glove box sensor goes out. You don’t want to deal with that.