At about the same time I was offered the opportunity by my good buddy Kerry to buy his car. This car was the second most special car I ever owned, second only to the blue Corvette. A
Mercedes 500 SEC is a two door sedan with a good sized back seat, big enough for adults to ride in comfortably. This SEC was a 1984 black on black which Kerry bought in Germany and had it immediately shipped to the independent tuner AMG. In stock
trim the 500 SEC was a very nice luxury sedan. After AMG was finished it was a very fast super handling luxury sedan. AMC rebuilt the engine, increasing the bore such that the displacement was now 5.6 liters, replaced the cam shafts with high performance
cams, modified the suspension, including lowering it approximately two inches, replaced the hood and trunk lid with lightweight aluminum. Very attractive and lightweight three piece OZ Racing wheels and high performance tires were added to reduce
unsprung weight and improve road adhesion.
After AMG was finished with all of this, the car was shipped to the US, where in order to get it smogged and licensed Kerry had to do a number
of performance reducing modifications such as adding catalytic converters and adding a computer engine module that kept the car running clean but badly. He got it smogged and immediately removed all of the mandated stuff. The catalytic converters
were removed and replaced with through pipe sections of the exact length as were the cats.
So this was the condition of the car when I bought it. It was our family car, and served
us very well. It was as well behaved as possible for what was essentially an exotic car. The valve timing was pretty wild which required a somewhat high idle speed to keep it smooth. My mechanic said that he couldn’t understand
how it ran. But run it did. One night on 280 I had it up to 150 MPH past the Stanford antenna. It was still accelerating, but as I said earlier, at that speed 280 is not flat nor smooth. I was never beaten in a stop light drag
race, not even by a Lamborghini Countach. Note, I didn’t normally engage in such things, but once in a while the challenge is too big to refuse.
One evening in the
early 1990’s after work Gale and I met friends in Santa Clara for diner. Leaving to go home, Gale said that she would like to drive the SEC. I was fine with that, put the top down on her car, a 1979 Mercedes 450SL, and we left in tandem for the
drive up 280. I was in front as we were approaching Woodside, when a guy in a BMW 635csi came up beside me and indicated that he wanted to see if his car was faster than the SL. I thought it probably was but what the hell. I stayed with him
up to 95 MPH, when the poor aerodynamics of the SL killed any further speed. Gale was watching this from behind us, and her competitive juices got the better of her and she floored the SEC. She went past us at probably 140 MPH, just as we
topped the rise past the Woodside road exit, and she flew past a gaggle of cars in the two right hand lanes. At the head of this gaggle was a CHP. He apparently never saw her as he probably was not paying attention at 55 MPH and she was going at
least 80 MPH faster. She was pretty shook up when I pulled into the garage.
Disclaimer – Gale didn’t want me to write about this incident and claims that she wasn’t going
that fast, but she was. (Remember the 55 MPH sad period in driving history? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law )
The biggest problem with the SEC was having to getting it passed the smog test every two years. I handled this by taking the 450 SL into a trusted smog place with the SEC paperwork and a case of beer
in the trunk. I left with the SEC passing smog paperwork and the SL lighter by the weight of a case of beer. But smog testing became more difficult as the state began to crack down on such behavior. Pictures of the cars had to be submitted,
and inspections became more frequent. I had to reinstall the cats and the computer and take it to a state run smog inspection place and that was a pain. The guy said it passed, but it sure doesn’t run well. Off came the crap for another
two years.
I had it until 1998 when I sold it to a friend at work who said that he didn’t care how hard it was to license. It was a sad day.
So why did Kerry sell me the SEC? As I described, it was a terrific car. He replaced it with a Mercedes SL600. That is a 6 liter V12 two seat sports car that had 493 HP from the factory. But it didn’t stay
that way. Kerry shipped the car to Florida to be reworked by Renntech, a tuner company run by the former head of AMG in Germany. It came back with a 7.4 liter V12 that put out at least 600 HP. It was really fast. Kerry and I drove it
to Southern California to be tested by Motor Trend magazine. They were blown away by its performance. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but 0 – 60 MPH was approximately 4 seconds and the quarter mile came and went in about 11 seconds.
One of the writers made a comment about the cost of the car plus the Renntech modifications, “cost as much as a house.” The other writer said “Expensive yes, but you can live in your car but you can’t drive your house.”