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My wide body 2005 SL65 currently sits in SoCal with minor front bumper damage from a collision on the freeway with a piece of shredded tire.
Late next week the damage will be repaired and on 4/16 the car will hit the paint booth. Because Grigio Silverstone is a very difficult paint to match/blend and my body guy is a perfectionist, the entire car will be re-sprayed.
I'm getting married on 4/24 and will have a kid on the way...I am not a wealthy guy so the two-seater will soon have to go.
Here is the opportunity, if you purchase my car or make me a trade before 4/14, you may choose any (two stage) color to have the car painted.
When I purchased the car four years ago from a fellow MBworld member, it had been babied to a shameful level, lol. 19,000 miles and no mods outside of aftermarket wheels.
At the 28,000 mile marker I had BenzWorks do the "resonator delete" and OE Tuning ECU/TCU tune. Other than that this car has seen zero performance mods in its lifetime.
In my four years of ownership I have had two ABC struts replaced by an AMG Master Tech under warranty, both times the ABC fluids were flushed. Other than that I have had zero mechanical issues with the car.
Over a year ago the car sustained hail damage to the front end (mostly hood, some fender) while I was out of state for a car show (this damage does not show on CarFax).
I took the loss as an opportunity to do the Prior Design black series conversion. I sent the car to the best Benz crew I know, BenzWorks. The BenzWorks team oversaw the project and brought on the best wide body specialist they knew to install the kit.
Here is the list of mods (I'm sure I'm missing a few minor things):
Prior Design Black Edition wide body kit – Retail is $14k
Ferrari Grigio Silverstone paint + body kit install
Carbon Fiber overlay on front lip + rear diffuser
SL63 headlights
SL63 tail lights + 3rd brake
SL63 grille
SL65 Black Series OEM exhaust tips
oCarbon Carbon Fiber interior
D2 Forged 3piece wheels*
Renntech lowering module with remote
"resonator delete"
OE Tuning ECU/TCU tune
*as you will see in the pictures the rear wheels are not aggressive enough (or at least not aggressive enough for my taste), the rear offset should have been lower and I should have gone with 345 tires instead of 325.
BenzWorks also changed fluids, replaced brake pads, both batteries and put in 24 new spark plugs.
All in all, I have put over $40k into the car in the last 12 months. Best of all not a dime was spent on anything that was broken or into performance mods that could potentially increase the future running cost of the car.
The KBB private party sale value for the car is $49k. I am asking a $6k premium on that for the $40k I've put in it
Trade - I'm very open to a trade as long as it has four seats and is fast. Willing to take cash or give cash with trade.
I'm just now listing it because I had held it a few months for one pal but he decided not to sell his current AMG. Then held it a few months for another pal and then he pulled up last week in an SLS, like sorry man.
So I'm going to give it an official go and if it doesn't quick sale at this price...I'll be able to tell the wife I tried. ha!
Obviously I strongly agree but reality is that there is a very small market for an SL65, even smaller with such modifications and at the end of the day we all know we will lose 80% of our mod money...
Not to mention I'm trying to sell it in 14 days.
It will be decision I regret for a long time but one I need to bite the bullet on in my current situation
I'll say this, with out question, I 100% will own a R230 SL65 again some day!
06 SL65AMG, 13 Tesla Model S 60kwh, 02 Jaguar S-Type 3.0, 12 S550 4 Matic, 07 E320 Bluetec, 06 LX470
Now this is a steal whoever picks it up, an actual 65 engine, carbon fiber interior trim, 3 piece wheels, tune, and the mileage and warranty on top, whoever picks this up will be extremely happy, can keep it as it is, or dump a little more with exhaust/intakes and call it a day
My email and inBox got a lot of action, I'm working on getting back to everyone.
Keep the inquiries coming, I'm happy to answer any question, full disclosure. Obviously I already volunteered the "bad" - hail on old panels, bumper damage and rear wheel fitment. I'm either selling in the next 2 weeks or keeping it for the long haul.
Below is an image of the bumper damage. Look by the time stamp. Very minor stuff, fiber glass cracked at the top and on the front. The fiber glass didn't break or crack on the underside. Then also notice the stress spot where the bumper and fender meet, quarter size. My body guy has made fiber glass parts from scratch before, very skilled, there will be no sign of the damage when he is done. Period.
As far as interior - Charcoal exclusive napa leather, panoramic roof, alcantara headliner...and the AMAZING oCarbon genuine carbon fiber trim pieces (check those guys out!). Not the best pic and was taken before I put the ashtray with carbon cover in:
There is a rock chip in the windshield that was filled before I owned it and a quarter size scuff on the leather of the driver door near the lock.
Ok, I'm pretty sure I have responded to all emails and inBox messages.
Thank you everyone for the interest. It doesn't look like she'll have any problems finding a new home at this price but you never know until a deal is done ... so please, anyone interested in buying or trading...shoot me a message!
When I purchased the car four years ago from a fellow MBworld member, it had been babied to a shameful level, lol. 19,000 miles and no mods outside of aftermarket wheels.
Who was the last owner on this forum, user name?
I ran the Carfax: WDBSK79F85F099592 One problem, the car was last sold 4/19/2013. How could you have owned it for 4 years when it was last purchased in April 19th 2013? I'm no mathmatician but.........???
There have been 5 owners in less than 35k miles. Any skeletons in the closet so to speak? That seems much higher than normal. You are selling after less than 2 years of ownership????
I'm really interested in the car but there are some serious descrepancies that have to be answered. I am posting here so they can be addressed. I'm sure these are the same questions that others are asking in their head or to you by email.
Sending from Iowa all the way back to California for a tear in the bumper seems very odd for a small repair and for someone who says they don't have a lot of money. Just shipping back and forth will be thousands of dollars and a repaint on the entire car will be $5k or more.
All very legit questions and I'll happily answer them all.
1. I purchased the car August 2011 from a member on this board. I will shoot him an email and see if he wants to chime in. I will be happy to email you or anyone else documents to prove that.
So why does it say 2013 on CarFax? Because that is when I finally registered the car. I drove around for more than a year on temp tags always with half of a mind to jump tittle, saving me money and the next owner another owner on his car fax report. I had no intentions of keeping this car for more than 2 years, I never have kept a car longer than that.
The car was just under 20k miles when I purchased it. I'll double check with the previous owner but I'm pretty positive he registered it under his personal name and then business name so really 4 owners...but at any rate, no question that is a lot of owners for so little miles and I accounted for that in my asking price.
Skeletons - The only ones that I know of are the hail damage and tire scrap damage that happened on my watch. I talked to the previous owners dealership tech who did all the maintenance on the car well he had it, I then had the PPI done by a resident MBworld AMG MasterTech who came highly recommended (Nick 55), Nick couldn't believe how great of shape the car was in...and I have the VMI that shows no kind of red flags.
In my time of ownership, clean bill of mechanical health besides the two ABC struts done under warranty by my AMG MasterTech. In the last 8 months my dealer and then Serge at BenzWorks dug into the car looking for anything they could find to stick to the warranty company before I got to mods that would void the warranty. They couldn't find anything.
2. The reasoning behind sending the car all the way to BenzWorks in the first place is obvious, they are the best and they have been involved in more SL wide body builds than anyone else.
The plan was to have the car done by June of last year, ship it to the midwest where I would enjoy it and take it to midwest car shows to promote the website I was going to launch:
MidAmericaCarTell.com
Then send the car back to BenzWorks in October to upgrade the intake, cooling and install bigger turbos for SEMA (We had a spot lined up in the Toyo booth).
Unfortunately the car didn't get back to me until August so we decided to scrap SEMA and do the performance mods over the winter. I caught the tire scrap damage late fall and it was a no brainer to have the repair work done by the BenzWorks team at the same time I was having the performance mods done this winter.
Fast forward to today, I get married in 17 days have my first kid on the way which was not the plan and I'm now trying to make the right family man decision to sell the car instead of spending my money on power gains.
I think that covers everything but if I missed anything, please feel free to ask any questions. Also, as I said I have all the documentation to support everything I say as fact, shoot me an email and I'll send it your way.
Neither the hail damage nor the tire scrap damage shows up on CarFax nor is there any sign of it on the car. If I was trying to be anything but completely transparent I would have never disclosed either of those details...but I did and have included both factors into my asking price.
The car is still available but I'm leaning toward holding off until I have the car in my possession to sell it.
Ivan at my shop does phenomenal work but because of that he also has a SoCal BMW community cult following. He is so busy that asking anything more of him than getting my car right is a chore.
There were three members working on arranging flights to come see the car which was proving to be a challenge because being in Iowa with the car in Cali, I'd have to rely on the swamped shop to be flexible and accommodating to out of town visitors.
So my plan as it stands now is to get the car completed, inspected (again), have a full detailed photoshoot of interior exterior and then close container shipped back to me.
I'll post all the photos here and then any members wanting to come see the car and spend a good chunk of time with it, I'll be be ale to fully accommodate them.
The only downside is that the buyer would no longer have the option of a no cost color change.
That said, the car will be painted next week and if anyone out there is A) very serious about buying this car and B) really wanting to change the color...
04-03-2015, 11:03 PM
