Any pics?

 

Mercedes farmed out the body assembly of the limited production 500E chassis to Porsche because Porsche had excess capacity in the late 80s/early 90s when they were on the financial rocks and were nearly bankrupt. It was entirely built from stock 300E parts, the fender skirts were rolled to fit the wider wheels, the engine compartment was widened considerably to fit the M119 V8 in place of the M103 I6, they had to relocate the battery to the trunk due to the bigger engine, they ran staggered tires, and the headlights had driving lights instead of fog lights, they had fog lamps mounted in the lower bumper skirt. The rear subframe and differential were beefier but none of that shows on the outside. they were pretty much loaded with options (about the only W124 ortho seat I have ever seen was in a 500E). The suspension did ride a bit lower than the Sportline option for the regular W124's. I think I read somewhere the chassis were shipped between Mercedes and Porsche something like 6 times before assembly was completed.

The *original* 500E was the AMG "Hammer" of which only very few were made, this was when AMG was an independent tuner and not a wholly owned subsidiary of MBZ. Mercedes pretty much copied what AMG had done to make the limited production 500E/E500 (1994, next to last year for W124, was the year Mercedes swapped and put the letter first), except the 500E used the new M119 5.0L DOHC V8 while the original Hammer used the older 5.6L K-Jet (CIS) engine.

 

Yes somewhere, I will look as I don't have a specific car photo book and nothing from that era on digital. It was my first car after the last child carseats. It was the second car in my life I sold for more than I paid, the other was my silver anniversary Trans Am '79

 

Well, most of that is right, every year was different, just like our cars. Trust me you could see the difference easily. mine was a '93. It had a Bostrom style seat on springs. may have been made by Bostram. You can call the fenders "rolled" but they were way wider front and back,noticably so, so were the wheels, and it was at least an inch lower than the "E" . I believe the battery was in the trunk, but I think my '91 190E was under the hood, My '93 500S was in the trunk.