It’s not unusual to see “wrapper cars” – those with ridiculously low mileage, often still in their delivery plastic – crossing an auction block for big money relative to more well-used examples. Still, when this 122-mile 1989 Mercedes-Benz 560SL with its window sticker still affixed to the glass brought $260,400 (£202,470) last week at Broad Arrow’s Monterey auction, our valuation team took notice.
The first thing that drew our eyes was that this, a car that spent its life in the hands of one family that formerly owned a Mercedes-Benz dealership, was the lowest-mileage example we’ve seen come to public sale. Of the 245 transactions on record for 560SLs, the next-lowest came in at 1900 miles. The median mileage is 62K – a number that makes sense for a mass-produced car that collectors appreciate but don’t revere quite as much as, say, the preceding W113 “Pagoda” generation.
From 1971 to 1989, Mercedes-Benz churned out nearly a quarter-million examples of the R107-generation SL. As a consequence, it’s a popular and usually affordable means to get into the brand and enjoy period drop-top luxury. The 560SL arrived for the North American, Japanese, and Australian markets in 1986 and continued through the generation’s end in 1989. Though it was the top trim in these markets, Mercedes still produced nearly 50,000 560SLs, so it wasn’t exactly a rarity.
In part because there were so many of them, and also because they had a reputation for being reliable, people did what they were supposed to do with the 560SL – they drove it. There’s no shortage of cars from this generation that have clocked well over 100,000 miles.
In addition to the fact that it exists in the shadows of other generations of SL, high production volume and mileage have rendered the 560SL affordable. The median price in the US is a reasonable £20K (media price on a comparable 500SL in the UK isn't far off), and even cars with fewer than 50,000 miles still don’t clear 40 grand. As a result, a £202K sale, ten times the median price, is at face value completely baffling regardless of the odometer reading.
But it’s precisely production count and mileage that created this scenario. No one, well, almost no one, thought to park these cars, and the examples that have extremely low miles are now exceedingly rare. Add in the facts that restoration costs are driving up the differences between top-flight and driver-quality examples, and that the 560SL is enough of a collector car to have its own cadre of die-hard fans (and enough in the room to drive bidding sky-high), and you get the outcome you see here.
