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I have always been curious on exact numbers of each color SL65 for a given year, etc. VRV000 on this forum took on the task of trying to catalog all the SL55s with a P30 package so based on his work I've started the same process for the SL65s. I began in the 08s as that is what I own. It is a very labor intensive project in that you basically have to search every possible serial number twice in a range to find all the SL65s, once for LHD and once for RHD. In any case I've done about 10000 searches so far and purposely worked beyond the 08 range to find many 09s and back until I was firmly in 07s. I am continuing the finding the 07s now. But, I am fairly confident I have all the 08s.
Keep in mind I am talking Model Year. Mercedes decides each year what date to swap over to producing the "next year's" car. Their is a option code that indicates it. 808 for MY 08, 807 for 07, etc.
The conventional wisdom and most sites I have seen with a number cite 120 NA 08 SL65s and 273 produced worldwide. Keep in mind the worldwide number is most likely calendar year production. In any case I have NOT found those numbers to be accurate. I may have missed car or two but I don't think so; I'm stepping through all possible serial numbers in sequences a few hundred at a time.
Based on this I've found the MY 08 number to be:
164 total world production
122 shipped to NA
118 shipped to US (the difference between this and NA is 3 to Canada and 1 to Mexico)
I'll continue to post updates as I collect a given year but it takes longer and longer as you go as the early years had more cars and spanned a greater range of serial numbers. I am capturing FIN and VIN #s, date delivered, where delivered, exterior and interior color and Pano yes / no for now
For anyone interested; this is the distribution of exterior colors for 2008 MY SL65s worldwide (164 total)
Ex Code Ex Color Count
40U Black 67
75U Iridium Silver Metallic 31
960U Alabaster White 18
197U Obsidian Black Metallic 11
755U Tenorite Grey Metallic 10
112U Chromite Black Metallic 7
590U Fire Opal Red 4
048U Designo Mystic White 3
041U Designo Graphite 2
359U Tanzinite Blue Metallic 2
723U Cubanite Silver Metallic 2
042U Designo Havana 1
046U Designo Plattinum 1
182U Almandine Black Metallic 1
541U Thulite Red 1
693U Travertine Beige 1
904U Midnight Blue 1
946U Topaz Blue 1
For anyone interested; this is the distribution of exterior colors for 2008 MY SL65s worldwide (164 total)
Ex Code Ex Color Count
40U Black 67
75U Iridium Silver Metallic 31
960U Alabaster White 18
197U Obsidian Black Metallic 11
755U Tenorite Grey Metallic 10
112U Chromite Black Metallic 7
590U Fire Opal Red 4
048U Designo Mystic White 3
041U Designo Graphite 2
359U Tanzinite Blue Metallic 2
723U Cubanite Silver Metallic 2
042U Designo Havana 1
046U Designo Plattinum 1
182U Almandine Black Metallic 1
541U Thulite Red 1
693U Travertine Beige 1
904U Midnight Blue 1
946U Topaz Blue 1
2008 SL65 - WDBSK79F48F138554 was originally 723U Cubanite Silver Metallic. In 2019 the color was changed as per request by the owner to Blue.
2005 SL65 AMG 723 Cubanite Silver WDBSK79FX5F095592 with Pano, delivered to Prestige Motors, INC in Paramus NJ, 07652, vehicle inspection done in NY since 343 miles in Texas, now around 46K miles. What is a FIN?
Mot sure what exactly the acronym stands for but it may be Factory Identification Number. In any case all the cars have a FIN that I believe is assigned when they decide to build it at the factory. That number is the only number on cars destined for countries that do not come to the US or don't go to other countries that require a VIN, if their are any? The existence of the FIN is a very good thing in that it has only two possible variations for a given possible serial number. The FIN for your car for example is:
2304791F095592 The 1 before the F designates left hand drive. If it was built as a RHD it would be a 2 there. This means to find all the SL65s in a given possible range of serial numbers (the last six digits) I only have to check each twice, once in case it is LHD and once in case it is RHD. The 79 right before the 1F in the number is for an SL65. If the number I enter is a match I get a datacard. If no it tells me that and I move on to the next possible sequence. So to check a range of 1000 serial numbers for SL65s I have to do 2000 FIN searches. That may sound bad BUT the VIN is worse. First, VINs don't exist for most cars delivered outside the US. But more importantly the ninth character in a VIN (an X in your case) is a random check number from 0-9 or x; 11 possibilities. So to check the same 1000 serial number range for SL65s would require 11,000 searches and miss a lot of the non-US cars.
The bad news is the serial number on your car, 095592 is 33,008 before where I currently am in the searches so to get back to the 2005's I have at least 66,016 searches left to do! I'm currently still in the MY07 cars and hope to finish finding all of them in a couple of weeks.
FIN stands for Fahrzeug Identifizierungs Nummer, which literally means vehicle identification number in German. Yet ironically, it is not identical to a VIN and each contains some different and some overlapping information. All Mercedes cars have a FIN, but only US, Canadian and Middle East market cars have a VIN.
Zachmac, can you not automate the searches and grab the data to evaluate? not sure where you get the datacards from and if that can be automated but if it is a website I'm sure some automation can be applied.
drlc01 if you know a way to do so please share. I'm using the Mercedes EPC site VIN search function. It doesn't allow wild card searches to my knowledge. We are using a simple Macro to open 200 searches at a time but then have to manually click on each instance to see if there is a corresponding datacard.
Zachmac, can you not automate the searches and grab the data to evaluate? not sure where you get the datacards from and if that can be automated but if it is a website I'm sure some automation can be applied.
@drlc01 I would love to find a way to 'suck' the data out of the webpages and export to Excel automatically, but that's beyond my skillset. I developed the macros to generate the potential VIN number sets and to open the multiple websites, but thats about my limit...
05 SL65 owner here I would love to get an idea how many have been lost over the years. I thought total R230 SL65s was somewhere around ~1,200 globally and over time I imagine many have been lost/destroyed.
Not enough to make the remaining cars extremely rare but it was a low production model to begin with.
eatmycrakers the total number of R230 SL65s produced worldwide was 3055. The common number bandied about for North America is about 1305 (about 2250 worldwide) or so before the 2009 Facelift. I eventually plan on knowing the exact numbers and will continue to post results here as I gather data. Impossible to know how many have been totaled or otherwise met some demise?
Well I think I may have found all the MY07? I have overlap now between 07 and 06 in my serial number searches so maybe? It is still possible I'll find a few pre-production number MY07s earlier but I doubt it as I'm showing the first 07 was delivered in February of 06! In any case I once again found datasheets from MB don't match the commonly quoted numbers. Keep in mind these are Model Year production numbers. The option code for Model Year change assigned by Mercedes Benz. Here is the MY 08 and 07 summary:
MY07 SL65:
346 delivered worldwide
171 delivered to North America
157 delivered to US
MY08 SL65:
164 delivered worldwide
122 delivered to North America
118 delivered to US
So the total delivered worldwide (and again I may find more 07s) is currently showing 510 for combined MY 07 / 08. That is somewhat below the normally cited number of 536, but again the 263 / 273 numbers for 07 / 08 usually cited may be calendar year production rather than MY.
Note: Edited to add SEVERAL additional MY07 found tucked back a way in the serial numbers. Realized first 11 of the MY07s are option coded as 019 or 101 which are Field Test cars or Control Production Test cars, respectively, one of which is RHD as you would expect.
You deserve a medal for all this research on the SL65. I feel certain that one day your hard work will prove an invaluable resource, especially as MB moves to all electric. I also always enjoy your participation on BAT (I'm W140). I think you may already have me cataloged, but my VIN is WDBSK79FX6F113199. Your ability to discern color distribution among the fleet is especially enlightening.
From “Everything you want to know about the SL230”, by Bernd Koehling, the Global production numbers for the SL65 by model year are:
2004 - 860
2005 - 857
2006 - 263
2007 - 273
2008 - 392
2009 - 355
2010 - 55
Total - 3,028
As this was published and sources include the MB Archives, these should be accurate. There was no breakdown by color or option.
From “Everything you want to know about the SL230”, by Bernd Koehling, the Global production numbers for the SL65 by model year are:
2004 - 860
2005 - 857
2006 - 263
2007 - 273
2008 - 392
2009 - 355
2010 - 55
As this was published and sources include the MB Archives, these should be accurate. There was no breakdown by color or option.
The problem with these numbers, which no one is contesting, is that they are cars produced in a calendar year numbers, NOT MY numbers. For example the 273 2007 is often quoted as the number of MY2008s but that is incorrect. MB shifts from one production year to the next pretty randomly. Each datacard has an option code designating the model year and that means that car was built to a specification for that MY, regardless of what year it was manufactured. So knowing that they manufactured 273 SL65s in 2007 doesn't tell you anything about how many MY2008s they made. That and the color breakdown are why I am methodically cataloging them all and capturing colors and options while I'm at it.
You'll notice the numbers above total 3055, again no one questions that. But that tells you almost nothing about how many of each MY were produced. For example the earliest MY 2007 I have found is serial #113822 and it was delivered Sept. 27, 2005! And the first MY 08 was delivered March 27, 2007 (#134026) Mercedes creates several of these early production test cars when they change model years and those cars can be found scattered in the previous MY production months or years ahead of the general release of the MY for wide distribution. I stand by my previously posted 164 world wide MY 2008s and am now at 348 MY 07s as I found a few more of the early production cars while going back through 06s. So my count, documented with VINs on MB EPC site and data cards is at 512 combined MY 07 and 08 cars which is very close to the 536 total from the stated 06 and 07 production numbers above. This is most likely short as many of those calendar year production 2006 263 cars were actually MY06s, not MY 07s.
Bottom line you have to differentiate between cars manufactured in a calendar year (the numbers sited by KyKen) and the number of cars built to a MY specification (the numbers I am verifying). What I've found so far is there were a lot more MY07s than previously thought and a lot fewer MY08s.
These data was for model years.
To be in a model year by law, at least 10 vehicles have to be produced in that calendar year. For example, my ‘08MY was produced in December of 2007. It should be included in the 2008 production data.
Also, You may be able to ask the MB archives directly.
These data was for model years.
To be in a model year by law, at least 10 vehicles have to be produced in that calendar year. For example, my ‘08MY was produced in December of 2007. It should be included in the 2008 production data.
Also, You may be able to ask the MB archives directly.
KyKen, look at your VIN. The digit right before the second "F" designates your MY. Yours should be an 8. And not sure who's law you are speaking about? MB manufactures these in Germany and ships them worldwide. The cars that don't come to North America don't even have VINs, they have FINs and those don't have a digit designating MY. For those you have to go to the data card and find the production year option code. The data quoted by you above IS NOT for MY. I have both his book and the one by Brian Long and they are both quoting calendar year cars produced in these numbers. NOT MY. I can send you my spread sheet and you can verify all the hundreds of datacards yourself or you can do the 58,000 VIN searches and counting I've done to verify it for yourself. MB archives won't tell you jack in this regard.
BTW, by your statement above your car would be a MY 2007 unless at least ten were produced in 2007. Would that make every car produced in 2007 a 2008? No. It isn't as simple as you are making it out to be, The major split usually occurs in production in about May or so of each calendar year between MYs.
These data was for model years.
To be in a model year by law, at least 10 vehicles have to be produced in that calendar year. For example, my ‘08MY was produced in December of 2007. It should be included in the 2008 production data.
Also, You may be able to ask the MB archives directly.
KyKen: BTW, when you say your car was produced in December of 07 do you mean manufactured or delivered? Is it one of the following serial numbers: 141475, 141497, 141518, 141542, 141590 or 141636? If so it was very close to the last MY08 produced. Only one was delivered in January of 08 after these were all delivered in December of 07. Then they switched to MY 09 cars. Delivered BTW means to the distributor (dealer). They can of course sell much later.
You deserve a medal for all this research on the SL65. I feel certain that one day your hard work will prove an invaluable resource, especially as MB moves to all electric. I also always enjoy your participation on BAT (I'm W140). I think you may already have me cataloged, but my VIN is WDBSK79FX6F113199. Your ability to discern color distribution among the fleet is especially enlightening.
06' SL65, Designo Graphite package.
Zoso7 yes I have your lovely Designo Graphite with green designo interior in the list! Very pretty combo. Only 12 of the 861 cars I've cataloged so far in that color combo.
Interior is 581 - Charcoal Exclusive, so more black, but if you put the hammer down, the passenger might turn Green Exclusive.
Zoso7 it is your car and you should know but the data card says your car is X14, Designo Graphite Green interior. It says 581 up top which is the base Charcoal interior but they always do that and then designate the Designo color down at the bottom of the list of options. Are you sure it doesn't have a subtle green hue. Run your VIN on either the MB EPC site or at Lastvin.com. Look near the bottom of the option list and you'll see X14, Designo interior color which was a common pairing with that exterior.
You Sir, are spot on. I was talking to my wife about it and she said she always thought the slightly green tint to the leather was just her eyes...too funny! I looked at my data card and yes, exactly, this car has the X14 Designo Graphite Green and yes, the car in that BAT ad you sent me is exactly like mine. I'm still trying to figure out why my car is the only one I've seen with the dash leather also used around the top of the speedo/tach binnacle. Most of what I've seen are fully alcantara wrapped, including the one referenced on BAT. I'll take a photo tomorrow to show you what I mean.
07-04-2021, 02:17 PM
