"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
05/18/2015 at 09:43 • Filed to: None
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"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
05/18/2015 at 09:43 • Filed to: None | 9
| 8 |
Yesterday the Angry Canadian hauled myself and my boss the four hour journey north-ish to Kansas City, Kansas to purchase a vehicle. The car? A nearly flawless twin-turbo v12 luxury sedan. The price? $11k. If you’ve read Tavarishes The Art Of the Flip you’ll remember !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The difference? This is a 2006, and I get to ride in it every day.
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This being the fastest, most expensive, and most luxurious vehicle I’ve been in all at the same time, I don’t have anything to really compare this to, so these numbers are mostly bullshit.
Appearance (7/10)
This is a pretty handsome and understated vehicle. Black on matte-silver AMG wheels with no flashy go-fast bits and difficult-to-read V12 badging all over the car means police attention is unlikely. This also has the AMG package, but you’re even less likely to notice the different brakes, tuning, wheels, or suspension. I hate the tail lights though. They’re hideous.
Interior (10/10)
Leather. Leather everywhere. So soft, so supple, and with no stains or marks. Alcantara headliner has a little dirt on it, but nothing to write home about. Everything is luxury, and everything is solid as hell. The flip-down visor mirror has a second mirror under it with high magnification so you can see just how much you suck at shaving, or clean out your nose before an important meeting of getting it brown again.
The seats will slowly pulse the bolsters and lumbar to (I assume) make sure your spine is constantly being gently shifted to avoid disk fatigue. The back seats recline and have pop up head rests. The GPS nav system, despite being 9 years old is far FAR superior to modern systems such as Ford SYNC, with a very responsive design and basic unobtrusive and classy graphics. No aux in or bluetooth, oddly. CD, cassette, or radio. Putting in a CD is made possibly by the LCD screen sliding up into the dashboard, and a tape is inserted by the LCD sliding down. Nifty.
Motorized rear sunshades, side sunshades, heated and cooled seats all over the place, vents and more vents, enough lighting to make the interior like day, and supremely expensive UV-blocking Mercedes glass make this a very VERY nice place to be.
Sound (7/10)
Depending on who you are this is where the car both excells and falls flat. The Bose system is ‘meh’, with a subwoofer that provides loud but not particularly clean noise, and some-teen other speakers of varying quality and position in the car. The Germans still haven’t figured out that quality > quantity with car audio, it seems.
The engine is utterly silent. Because it’s a V12 it’s so smooth you have no idea it’s even running, and because it’s a luxury car it’s been muffled to the point where you can’t hear it. Even revving the piss out of the engine while I stand next to the muffler I could still have a whispered conversation with someone. No V12 screaming and no turbo whistles is pretty awesome from a luxury standpoint, but in a car like this it needs to be heard.
The ride is spooky-silent. Like riding in an electric car. No road noise, no wind noise, hardly any engine noise, no shakes or rattles. It’s honestly a bit unsettling.
Handling (8/10)
This is a heavy car. 5200lbs-ish loaded heavy, and yet it can carve corners better than my 3500-lb Japanese economy car. Four-corner fast-acting hydraulic suspension keeps the car level no matter what shenanigains happen, and our $5000 OBDII scanner can enable a strut test mode that results in each corner bouncing up and down a few times in turn, resulting in low-rider-style jostling around. We call this ‘Rodeo Mode’ and intend on sitting in the car getting our bull rider on in the middle of the next Cars and Coffee.
Acceleration (10/10)
Here’s what happens when you floor it in a V12 TT Mercedes:
1. Push the go pedal
2. G forces
3. Disturbing lack of engine noise
4. Speeding tickets
The Mercedes V12 is so smooth and quiet that speed in this car builds in a very odd way. You don’t accelerate, speed just happens and you find yourself weighing a little bit more as it does. It’s bizarre and addictive.
Transmission (8/10)
It’s automatic. It’s there. You never notice it, which is its job.
Value (10000/10)
$11k can get you into a car that was $120K+ just 9 short years ago. If anything breaks, you’re basically screwed, but in theory a car like this is one of the best daily driving experiences you can possibly have, and the price you can get it at is astounding. Everybody needs to drive one of these monsters to experience what true luxury feels like.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go use this to get a test drive in a Caddy CTS-V.
MLGCarGuy
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 09:47 |
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What a sleeper. The cops will never know what this car is packing under the hood.
/s
bleedsblue23
> MLGCarGuy
05/18/2015 at 09:59 |
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Nothing a heatgun and dental floss cant fix.
AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 10:03 |
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And that’s the red-headed step-child of the S-class. [Mercedes] People generally look down on 220’s! Bose systems were always just “meh”, in pretty much every car I’ve ever been in. The HK systems were about the same. The B&O systems were much better. And now the Burmester system is amazing, constantly playing crystal clear notes, and nuances that I didn’t even know were in ‘that’ song. Now you need to try to find an S65!
FYI the V12 badges on the trunk are not OE.
Tripper
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 10:10 |
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lol holy shit! Congrats man, what a deal!
V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 11:01 |
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And that’s why we’re getting one in July
boxrocket
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 15:05 |
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My take on that generation of S-Class: Largely disappointing compared to its brethren, as it uses a lot of the same switches and controls, and fails to feel much different than your run-of-the-mill C-Class. Go to a Mercedes dealer or a CarMax that has S, E, and C classes of similar vintage, and see what I mean. They don’t feel as special as their price tag should indicate, and it’s little wonder folks are showing a preference for Range Rovers in the same budget. They’re also as big as a Crown Victoria/Grand Marquis/Town Car but with seemingly less room, especially in the trunk.
However, there are some perks to the S-Class on its own (but not necessarily exclusively, compared to thr A8/S8, 7-Series, Jaguar XJ, etc.): The easy-close doors, which allow the user to mostly close the doors, then a motor takes over to fully close them and quietly; they are, as you said, superbly quiet; the screen for the infotainment system is rotatable a few degrees to allow for better visibility or to minimize glare; the rear doors are of a good size and shape for relatively easy ingress and egress; newer COMAND system upgrades and safety innovations; labor rate is the same for any other Mercedes; some mild updates to the headlamps and tail lamps can make the car look several years newer for relatively cheap; they are uncommon enough and have road presence ao folks may still be impressed with them, if that's important to you.
Vicente Esteve
> Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
05/18/2015 at 21:50 |
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This car is so awesome. The possibility of most of us being able to afford one makes me giggle.
VE TWOELVEE
jkm7680
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
05/19/2015 at 15:45 |
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Bose sounds for meh.