Looks & Desirability - 92-93 500Es vs 94 E500s

[Ian White]

Curious your thoughts on the pre-facelift 036s desirability, looks (personal opinion) and prices as contrasted with the 1994 facelift models.

Also, with respect to the 1994 MY - what's the delta between the standard E500s and the limiteds? I know roughly 1/2 of the models produced in 1994 were E500 Limiteds. It seems the limiteds trade hands at a pretty significant premium just vs non-limited 94s. Think this is due to the smaller production numbers? The limited interiors are so....90's weird and cool at the same time.

 

[gerryvz]

Bunch of threads here on the forum with folks' opinions on facelift vs. pre-facelift.

If you start typing into the search box, some relevant threads will appear, as illustrated below.



There were roughly around 2,650 E500s produced per the "1994" and "1995" model years, give or take. Model years tends to be a North American construct, and is not so well recognized in European and other countries.

But using chassis #973321 as a ROUGH starting point for "model year 1994", there would have been around 2,650 E500s produced worldwide.

There were 951 E500 Limited models produced (data card code 958), which is just under 36% (35.886792%, to be exact) of total E500 production in late 1993 through early 1995.

I'm not sure that a study has been done as to the actual increased price of E500 Limited models vs. pedestrian E500 or 500E models -- that would be an interesting study. We have more and more data on this as over the past few years, a fair number of Limited models have been coming into the US.

My rough observation on this is that there is a very modest premium attached to Limited models, here in the US, as compared to E500 models of similar condition. Really, there is no actual mechanical performance improvement with Limited models, other than having wheels that are an inch larger (Evo II wheels) and perhaps slightly larger brakes, and an oil cooler? But generally speaking a Limited is considered a cosmetic difference -- and one that has a lot of appeal to some people, and zero appeal to others.

I believe that in non-US countries, the Limited models are held in higher esteem overall, and likely command a significantly larger delta over pedestrian E500 models. In the US, not so much. I would say for the US, the delta would be 10% or less.