Hello

I’m selling my 2004 Mercedes E55 AMG, currently located in Starkville, Mississippi 39759. The car’s been adult owned (I’m 34) by an Electrical Engineer that loves and pampers his cars. It hasn’t been raced under my ownership either on the street or at the track. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever had the accelerator down more than 2/3rds of the way down! I’m the 4th owner and I’ve had it since June 2016. With such a short ownership I guess you could really say you’re buying it from the third owner, except I simplified a few things. Namely, removing a lien the 3rd owner had and getting the title in-hand.
Why the short ownership? Not because I didn’t absolutely love the car.
I bought this car after I sold my hand built FD3 RX7:

The reason for the RX7 sale, among other things, was to scale back my investment in my car and re-invest in my house. My wife is scheduled to deliver our second child on the 14th (TOMORROW!) and I’ve got to use ½ of the proceeds of this sale to pay for related expenses + a small home construction project. The other half is going to go into a much cheaper commuter that can simply get me from point A to B. This is strictly a financial move. If I had it my way, I’d keep the car as long as I could. I’ll never get tired of how utterly insane the acceleration is on this beast.

The car spent most of its life in Texas. The most recent owner had the car for ~ 30k miles and was a 15 year Mercedes Master Tech.

One of the things that originally drew me to the car when I was searching was the fact that the owner, at the time, was a highly qualified mechanic that obviously cared for the car and the list of things he’s done for the car over the last 25k miles was extensive and effectively covers every common issue with these cars. I’ve always been told to plan on spending $2k+ on maintenance (outstanding or preventative) when purchasing an E55. With this car, all preventative measures have been taken so it’s really car that’s ready to go without needing to second guess anything.

The other thing that pulled me in on this car is how it’s optioned. Distronic was the option I really wanted to find. I’m not going to say it’s impossibly rare, but I’ve been looking at E55’s for several years now and I haven’t seen many with this option that were in my price range. It’s very well optioned (see below) and the original sticker price reflects how much the original buyer went all out.

Finally, the icing on the cake is that this car already has a Euro-Charged SC pulley, belt wrap kit, and ECU + TCU tune! The pulley and tunes are primarily about adding HP of course, but I also see it with the belt wrap as a preventative measure since the original OEM pulley doesn’t have such a great track record and the wrap kit cuts down on slips and wear. It was a big bonus for me.

So without further delay, here are the details:



The Car:

2004 Mercedes E55 AMG in Obsidian Black
Distronic
Parktronic
Airmatic
Keyless Go
Rear side blinds and powered rear sunshade
Dynamic, heated, and ventilated napa leather seats
Navigation
Voice control
HK Logic 7 sound
113k miles
VIN = WDBUF76J14A495364



Maintenance highlights done within the last 25k miles:

New Main and starter battery
New AC Compressor and system seals
New front right airmatic strut
New airmatic compressor
New Fuel Tank with pump and sending unit
New belts
New spark plugs (colder than factory due to smaller super charger pulley)
New engine mounts
New trans. mount
New valve cover gaskets (and chamber reseal)
New IC pump
Trans. flush and service
Recent B service done
Brake flush
Coolant flush
New air filters
New low pressure cooling pump
New upper ball joints
New lower ball joints
Full alignment done 4 months ago with car at current (stock height)
80% rear tires
60% front tires
60% on front and rear brakes



Additions:

Euro-Charged ecu and trans. tuned.
Euro-Charged smaller supercharger pulley
Euro-Charged belt wrap kit
Tinted E63 tailights
Satellite radio (very clean install if I may say so. Uses the aux port from the glovebox).
Bluetooth phone connectivity
SL Class 18” Rare AMG Wheels (18" x 9.5" 33mm offset from what I’ve been told). These are very cool wheels. It’s hard to appreciate them in pictures, but they’re fantastic in person and in excellent shape.
Completely debadged except for the main Mercedes emblems on the front and rear
37% tint all the way around + 70% tint (practically clear) thermal tint on the front windshield. All 3M, all less than a year old.
New Keyless Go Key – When I bought the car, the owner was down to 1 key. Since he worked at a dealership I went ahead and spent $300 on a brand new key which he coded to the car. So now, I have the brand new key and the original key.



Cons:

Rear Bumper Cosmetics – PO’s wife backed into the rear bumper which split a small section (pictured) and caused some paint cracks at the top of the bumper. I bought the car thinking it would be a fantastic candidate for an E63 bumper swap one day!
Driver’s interior b-pillar is a little beat up
Cup holder is currently not working (spring perch broke (common issue))
Driver’s window has a ~2” scratch in the tint that the PO said happened around installation. Additionally, since I’ve owned it, the window support must have caught a chunk of dirt or something hard and it’s created a light scratch in the tint from rolling the window up and down. *Update* After taking the pictures I’m noticing that the picture shows two vertical scratches in the tint. Not just one. I didn’t notice them in person, but the pictures don’t lie. I’d probably retint this window down the road if I kept the car and wanted it looking perfect.
Driver’s Sun visor is stiff (another common issue)
Leather is a little loose on the driver’s side center console arm rest
Cutout in the front bumper mesh for a radar detector / jammer (not really sure since it was from owner 1 or 2).


Pictures of the car under my ownership:
















* See more pics in the second post. Apparently I'm hitting to 40 image cap limit per single post

Downloads:

VMI
Carfax
Original Window Sticker

Trades:

The only trade + cash I'm interested in at the moment is a southern owned 2000-2004 BMW E46 330 Sedan with a 5SP manual and it's got to be < $10k and < 100k miles. If you've got one, we can talk, otherwise no trades

Brass Tax:

I want to get $16,500 for the car. I’m not trying to flip the car to make money. I’m just trying to get what I put into it with minimal depreciation penalties. Price is firm for the first 2 weeks. After-which I will put a progressive pricing plan into play. I'm hoping it's obvious from the time I've put into this ad that this isn't a fire sale so please don’t expect me to knock off $1k+ within the first 2 weeks of listing the car.

Bonus Offer:

If you want to add a full STAR diagnostic package I can add it to the car for another $600. This is an offer I’m only willing to give with the purchase of the car. I paid $800 for the package from shardul just a few months ago and I’ve actually improved on it by replacing the hard drive with a 256GB Samsung SSD hard drive. The suite will come with a laptop preloaded with DAS, WIS, etc and the actual multiplexer and all adapters. Purchased separately I’ll be trying to close the gap on what I paid vs what I’m selling it for. Picture

Like I said, my wife is delivering our daughter tomorrow, so I expect I’ll be in the Hospital through the weekend. I should be able to reply to inquiries, but reply times probably won’t be instantaneous. Additionally, MBworld is the first forum I'm posting to and I'll only possibly be listing on 1 or 2 more message boards simply to keep inquiries down while the baby is being born so that gives you a jump on this After we get settled at home I plan on listing through the normal outlets.

Car is parked in my garage straight from the photo session above. I don't plan on driving it until the sale completes. What you see is what you get.

Lane

PM is best or halfspec on gmail.

 

Pics #2

These are pics that wouldn't fit in the first post. They're all pics disclosing the cosmetic issues with the car:




Lane

 

No E39 trades huh?

 

I may be up for a 3 pedal e39. PM me if you want to talk particulars.

Lane

 

how is the new offspring? :-)

I think I might have emailed you on auto trader.....seems to be the same car

 

Not so great unfortunately. We had a scare last night when she got seriously ill within a span of 12 hours so we're back at the hospital for another 48+ hours for them to do a bunch of tests and get her well. At this point the doctors are optimistic that it's viral so we aren't going insane worrying that it could be worse.

Yes. The car is now listed on autotrader and eBay. I got a volley of text messages on my phone within hours of it going live (wee hours of the morning) and they all started out with "interested in your vehicle" or "do you still have your vehicle" or "came across your vehicle" The similarity of each message and the use of the generic term "vehicle" in every first sentence vs mercedes or E55 set off my scammer alert so I didn't respond to any of them. Also received several calls offering services to help me sell the car. Basically I've assumed all traffic coming from autotrader was all spam so far. If I missed your inquiry I'm very sorry. Please PM me here first if you'd like to talk and if you want to talk on the phone I can give you my personal email and number.

Lane

 

P P P Price dropppp!

$16,000

Can't edit my original post so I hope folks can scroll down this way :P

Lane

 

Wow, now that's how to write an ad

Beautiful E55 at a crazy low price.

The de-badge looks amazing and really goes to show how stealth these cars can be. I always wondered if Merc put those big V8 Kompressor badges on the fenders, so the 55 would stand out from the 350 on dealer lots. As if the brakes weren't a big enough tell

Nice backdrop and LS swapped FD as well!

 

Thank you very much for the kind words
I try and do the work up front and put the work into the ad vs answering the same questions over and over offline

Thanks again
Lane

 

Sale Pending

Lane