Sold from 1984 as the 200 through 300E, and only renamed “E-Class” for its final two years on sale, the W124 is the generation most often cited as the high-water mark of old-school Mercedes over-engineering, a reputation built on cars that racked up enormous mileages as taxis, and a body shape with a drag coefficient of 0.28 that was remarkable for a three-box saloon of 1984.[1]
Its most unlikely variant is recorded here alongside a mainstream 300E: the 500E, developed and partly assembled by Porsche because its widened, handbuilt fenders would not fit down Mercedes’ own W124 production line.[2] Porsche built the chassis, engineered the suspension, and shuttled unfinished cars back and forth between its Zuffenhausen plant and Mercedes’ Sindelfingen factory for final assembly. That arrangement produced barely 10,000 cars but a car the contemporary press nicknamed “the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” for looking, at a glance, like any other W124.