Mercedes Bonanza: Stash of SL-Class Cars
The SL-Class of Mercedes-Benz grand touring sports car has been in production since 1954. The SL designation in English translates as “Sport Light”. The third generation arrived in 1971 and stuck around through 1989. The seller has amassed seven of these cars with 380, 450, or 560 designations. They may have been in this barn for years and five were running when they were parked. The other two are parts cars, but it’s hard to tell the bad from the good. This is an all-or-nothing proposition – the cars must sold as a group.
450-SL
The seller has three of these automobiles and they could have been built anywhere between 1973 and 1980, and they came with a 4.5-liter V8 engine. One is silver with a black top and a decent red interior. Another is white with tan upholstery, and AMG spoilers/rocker panels. The last is a silver parts car with nearly 100,000 miles, sidelined by a fallen tree.
380-SL
A pair of these M-Bs have this package, produced somewhere between 1981 and 1985, and they came with a 3.8-liter V8 engine. This set of bookends consists of a dark green unit with a tan interior and a silver one with a blue interior and wire wheels.
560-SL
The seller has a duo of these machines, and the series was on the assembly line from 1986 to 1989. These had the biggest of the V8 motors at 5.5 liters. One is white with a blue interior, the other is grey with a tan interior which is a wrecked parts car. The only model year mentioned is 1987 so that must be for one of the 560-SLs
If you’re into the SL-Class of sports/luxury cars, you may have struck gold here. But it’s hard to gauge condition from some of the photos. They’re available as a package deal here on eBay where the Buy It Now price is $18,000 OBO. Elsewhere in the ad, the amount is $25,000, so the seller must have cut the price here on eBay. From Pomaria, South Carolina, this works out to about $2,500 per car. Do you have enough trailers to bring them all home?
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Comments
380 ♥
For decades, it was said by many, even normally reliable sources, that SL stood for Sports Leicht (sports light) and the history of the Mercedes-Benz alphabet soup was such that it could have gone either way (the SSKL (1929) was the Super Sports Kurz (short) Leicht and from the 1950s on, for the SL, even the factory variously used Sports Leicht and Super Leicht. It was only in 2017 it published a 1952 paper (unearthed from the corporate archive) confirming the correct abbreviation is Super Leicht.
“Bonanza”,,,I think most of us think of Ben and his boys, a series still in syndication today. Personally, when I see such magnificent cars laying in dust, indicates the current state of our automotive mentality. Just terrible. Even in their dilapidated condition, they still speak a shred of class.
There seems to be neglected R107s everywhere. Cheap to buy, expensive to revive. The cheapest one I found was free…. an abandoned , partially stripped restoration project with no paperwork. New owners of an industrial building wanted it, and several other abandoned cars in a bankrupt body shop gone. Although I have owned several R107s, I didn’t have time or interest to take it. All went to scrap.
If you have the skills, tools, and knowledge to work on them yourself, these can be decent rides. The package for sale here, if bought right, could be an OK deal. Fix up the best one or two, and sell the rest. The rougher ones are worth more dead than alive, and there is potential to make a tidy profit parting them out.
Looks like a bunch of junkyard worthy scrap to me. You would have 4-5x the value of the car(s) in them by the time they were road ready. Too bad they were let go for so long. Not even a desirable car either.
I like the old barn more than I do the cars.
Eeny, meenee, minee, no!
In the annals of automotive styling, the 1972 “update” to the SLs will always be one of the big mistakes. There is just something off with the lines of these. Parked next to the previous generation, they are a disaster.
Having messed around with Mercedes-Benz professionally since 1965 has allowed me to own and enjoy driving some of their best cars. This generation of SL, designed in the 1960s, is not among them. They are underpowered “German Corvettes”: big, heavy, with minimal interior space. Daimler-Benz sold boatloads of them, so plenty remain, most in better shape than these. Parting-out some of these will require huge time and effort. Fixing the others isn’t worth it when you can buy a decent one for the same money he’s asking. Run!
leave them where they are.
How do people find these things? Do they roam around backwoods barns and get lucky?
Word of mouth. Someone knew about these cars for years and kept mum. It wasn’t until they died, that they hit the airwaves.
That’s it, thanks!