The second S-Class, on sale from December 1979 and, for many buyers of the period, the car that made the badge synonymous with engineering rigour rather than mere size.[1] It ran for nearly twelve years with only one major revision, in 1985-86, and introduced a pillarless coupé body (C126, badged SEC) alongside the saloon for the first time in the S-Class’s history.
The range spanned a 280 SE straight-six to a 5.5-litre V8 in the 560 SEL, and the same 560 SEL badge covers several genuinely different power outputs depending on market and emissions equipment: a European “ECE” car without a catalytic converter made 220 kW, while catalyst-equipped “RÜF” and “CAT” versions sold in the same years made as little as 178 kW. This entry records the non-catalyst European figure and says so, rather than picking whichever number happened to be highest.
A separately published 0-60 mph time for the US-market catalyst car is not converted to a 0-100 km/h figure here; the two describe different speed thresholds, and the entry uses only the figure that was actually measured to 100 km/h.
