Quick, name the first high-performance saloon that comes into your head. You probably said BMW M5, right? Most people would, thanks to a reputation it’s earned over the decades, but as the latest episode of Revelations with Jason Cammisa illustrates, it might not be the most perfect.
That honour instead lies with the Mercedes-Benz 500E. You know, “the Porsche one”. Though as Cammisa explains, the meaning of Porsche’s involvement has become lost over the years too.
We won’t spoil the surprise, but let’s just say there was a lot more in-house Mercedes to the 500E than associations with Porsche would have you believe. That said, it must have been quite special watching 500Es rub shoulders with the Audi RS2 that Porsche was building at the time.
And it’s not just the Porsche link or the performance tweaks that made the E500 special either, but that it was a W124 – one of the most thoroughly-engineered cars Mercedes-Benz has ever developed, and a large part of why the brand has the reputation it does today.
If you don’t get to the end of the video with an overwhelming desire to buy an E500, or indeed any kind of W124, we salute your power of will – but you may have formed a different answer in your head for the next time someone asks you for a quick-draw answer about high-performance saloons.
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Honda S600: the highest-revving sports car | Revelations with Jason Cammisa
Mercedes W123 | The Next Big Thing with Magnus Walker
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