Seventies S-class Mercedes are on the move

The Seventies Merc S Class has warmed up. Up to recently only the 450SEL 6.9s have been making decent money but mint low-mileage smaller-engine survivors have now broken the £20k barrier. In April, The Market by Bonhams solid a gorgeous 1976 Milan Brown 280SE with 39k original miles, history, and magazine features for £24,525 – beating the estimate by six grand and attracting 20 brisk bids.

Mind you, this was a really lovely example, cherished and fanatically fettled over its 47 years by a handful of obsessive M-B Club owners. Never restored, it was in the sort of one-year-old, nearly new, original condition that you never see any more. The Olive Green MB Tex interior may not be to everybody’s taste but try finding another in the same sort of condition. Professionally restoring a tired example would be ruinous and easily cost four times the price of this one, proving it was incredible value.

But this won’t be the only low-mileage example out there. Mercedes built 473,000 Friedrich Geiger-designed W116s between 1972 and 1979 and, while the vast majority will have rusted away, you can still find special survivors like the Oriental Gold ’73 350SE with 32,000 miles and fully stamped service book offered by Sovereign Car Sales in Hampshire for £29,995 or the red 1974 ex-us 450SE with 25k miles being offered by a Dutch dealer for £32,950. Prices have climbed steeply over the past year or so, but not everybody has realised, so keep your eyes peeled. They’re just the sort of classic that could pop up on a website being undersold. Lovely ones with warranted, low mileages and long histories are now worth £25k all day long.