A W140 Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan, seen in Hebei Province in China in December 2019. It was cold and there was snow, but the big Merc’ made me feel warm again. The big German machine was painted in black with shiny gold details, suspension was lowered and it stood on extra wide wheels with gold-black BBS alloys.
Interestingly, it seemed to be setup as a drift car, with a typical removable steering wheel and a drift-style gear lever. The rest of the interior looked pretty much standard. The leather seemed a little worn out and the radio was a cheap after-market unit with a USB port.
In the back I found a water gun, another toy gun, and a pack of pet diapers for dogs.
The classic BBS wheels are very popular in China. BBS still makes them new but there are a lot of fake ones around. On Chinese car part markets you can snap up a set for a fraction of the price of the real thing.
The W140 Mercedes-Benz S-Class was made from 1991 until 1998. The S600 was powered by a 6.0 liter V12 engine with an output of 394 hp and 570 Nm. It was a seriously fast car. Zero to 100 was gone in 6.5 seconds and unlimited top speed was about 270 km/h.
The W140 was not officially sold in China to the general public, but the Chinese government and large state-owned companies imported at least a couple of thousand cars. Later on, many were sold off to the private market and quite a few are still around today.
License plate in from Tianjin Municipality, with the very special 津A·69919 sequence.
A very interesting Mercedes. Nearby, I found a whole lot of modern classic Mercedes-Benz cars. More on that collection in a later post.
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