W251 R500 years offered

[bolidemichael]

Wikipedia tells me that the R500 was offered in the UK with a 5.5L engine, which I presume coincided with the 2010/11 facelift.

However, I can only ever find R500s in pre-facelift guise on the second hand market and I have been watching these for a couple of years now on autotrader.

Can anyone confirm otherwise?

[Stegel]

The 5.5 litre engine came in during the production run of the original body style (there was one on eBay a few weeks ago, ridiculously priced at £20k plus “because rare”!) but I don’t think MB made it available in the post-facelift car in the UK.

[bolidemichael]

Thanks Stegel.

If you're correct, it means that one would have to look for the R350CDI for a facelift seven seat offering.

EDIT: Thinking about it... that might suggest that the 5.5L R500 may be as rare as the R63...

Edited by bolidemichael on Monday 4th November 00:02

[DKL]

There seem to be very few larger cars with the 390bhp engine. I think there are but a handful of e500 estates, a few more saloons.
R500 are fairly rare anyway but I've only seen a couple of 5.5. Last one I saw was a more reasonable £7k and the ad got scammed several times.
No idea if they are mainly 6 or 7 seaters. I'm sure I saw a figure of about 8 rhd r63 too. Who buys a 6.3 litre people carrier new? Cool used but someone has to shall out the 100k+ in the first place.

[tobinen]

By weird coincidence I saw one today on the way to the bodyshop. I didn't know they used the 5.5, I just assumed they were all 5.0 302 BHP motors

[bolidemichael]

I look forward to the results of your protracted paintjob, Tobinen!

Was the 5.5L a facelift or a frog eye?

[AC43]

DKL said:

There seem to be very few larger cars with the 390bhp engine. I think there are but a handful of e500 estates, a few more saloons.
R500 are fairly rare anyway but I've only seen a couple of 5.5. Last one I saw was a more reasonable £7k and the ad got scammed several times.
No idea if they are mainly 6 or 7 seaters. I'm sure I saw a figure of about 8 rhd r63 too. Who buys a 6.3 litre people carrier new? Cool used but someone has to shall out the 100k+ in the first place.

In the UK maybe 10 E Class estates. Quite a lot more saloons. A few hundred coupe's (yes I know they're C class-based).

The 5.5 seems to have been more common in the CLS.

But probably still very low numbers.

In the US of course the 5.5 is the entry level CLS which is more like it.