The W124 Mercedes 500E was the world's most perfect sedan | Revelations with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 05

Once upon a time the entire world conspired to make the perfect sedan It was designed by an Italian who was obsessed with safety It was engineered by Germans who were infatuated with fuel economy It had a Le Mans winning v8 strangely because the Japanese had just finally arrived in America And it was so fat it didn't fit down its own production line So it needed to be hand-built by rivals across town It was the Mercedes-Benz 500e and it is the world's most perfect sedan By the mid 1970s Mercedes had twice put an Unconscionably large v8 in its s-class. The first was 6.3 liters of shut-up hippie The second was a 6.9 liter middle finger issued right in the middle of a fuel crisis and yet Despite these childish acts of defiance Mercedes image remained old and stodgy Ironically that very fuel crisis sent Mercedes into an existential tailspin that resulted in twins the subcompact W201 and compact W124 sedans rescued Mercedes from the past and Catapulted to defining the future of the automobile Thanks to looming US fuel economy regulations Mercedes through its entire engineering might behind its compact twins Which would also use a new family of fuel-efficient four five and six cylinder engines And then Mercedes found an Italian to make them look like the future Bruno Sacco's design was Revolutionary though It may not look at now because every sedan since has been modeled after these cars Integrated bumpers flush headlights taillights on the body with a trunk opening that dipped below them it also had a wedge-shaped high trunk lid for aerodynamics and Something else its rear was tapered like a teardrop It may look like an upright square box to the eye But not to the air with a coefficient of drag as low as zero point two six The w124 is one of the most aerodynamically efficient sedans of all time This was designed in the 1970s These cars looked like spaceships when they debuted because everything else on the road looked like this Thing about Bruno Sacco is that he had just come from Mercedes safety department So while his stated goal was to create a design that would stay relevant for three decades His actual target was at the confluence of design efficiency and safety So Sacco's cars included innovations like the mesmerizing articulating single wiper It covered a record-breaking 86% of the windshield but its arm stayed parallel to the airflow at all times the blade didn't lift off the glass on the Autobahn and ribbed taillights designed so that they still transmit light when they're covered with snow or mud and Rear headrests that drop down at the press of a button so you didn't back over your neighbor's kid by accident By the end of the 1980s Mercedes was basking in its huge success with yuppies everywhere fawning all over their expensive Over-engineered status symbols, but with the new decade came a new crisis and its name was Lexus Lexus stunned the world with a flagship that was in almost all respects better than the Mercedes s-class and it cost Half as much less even than the six-cylinder 300 e there went a quarter of Mercedes-Benz US sales overnight a Desperate plea came in from Mercedes North America. Hey Krauts Throw a v8 in that thing or we're never gonna be able to sell another one good idea But remember this was a fuel crisis vehicle it was designed for skinny little four five and six-cylinder engines and Mercedes obsession with safety meant the frame rails were placed close to the center of the engine compartment to protect you in an offset crash Way ahead of its time But a big wide v8 was never gonna fit And with Mercedes engineers so busy trying to figure out how to beat Lexus with the next s-class They just didn't have the time to mess with the old 124, but you know who did? Porsche Three things to remember Porsche and Mercedes are both headquartered in Stuttgart. They're like walking distance away from each other see Secondly Porsche was in huge trouble with US sales down by almost 90% They were desperate for money and work and third Porsche has an engineering consulting service So Mercedes walked right over and hired Porsche to fit the new Mercedes v8 into the 124 Porsche engineering would be responsible for widening the front frame rails to make room Reinforcing the firewall and structure to deal with the extra power moving the front seats further apart to fit the exhaust down the new wider transmission tunnel and then doing the side impact crash testing Meanwhile, the new v8 codenamed m119 had just made its production car debut in the 500 SL and then Immediately won the 24 hours of Le Mans the 1989 Sauber C9 used a twin-turbo 925 horsepower version of that engine and it took first second and fifth places in that race Mercedes tested the engines after the endurance race and found out that not only did they make more power after the race than they did Before they showed negligible wear you can't make this stuff up Anyway, the m119 came in two different sizes and Mercedes realized that if they put shorter connecting rods in it The 5-liter could be made to have the same external dimensions as the 4.2 liter Which meant that Porsche's engineering could be used for two models The first would be the 400e designed for the American market to compete against another car with 400 in its name Yeah The Lexus LS 400 The second model was aimed right at Munich with the full-fat 5-liter to banish the sports sedan that had been giving Mercedes Autobahn agita for years BMW m5 this big bore short stroke all aluminum v8 is a Masterpiece the block is decades old But the heads were all new with four valves per cylinder four camshafts and variable valve timing it made supercar power But there was a problem a big fat problem To complement all that power Mercedes gave the 500e suspension wheel and brake components from the heavier and wider SL To fit that stuff the 500e got 2.2 inches of delicious gorgeous finger-licking fender flares and Now it was so fat. It didn't fit down its own production line at the Mercedes plant Once again Porsche to the rescue the factory that had been building the 959 supercar was sitting empty And so Mercedes paid Porsche again this time to build the 500e Mercedes would ship over a 300e body in white which Porsche would then modify to fit the v8 It sent the reinforced body back over to Mercedes for paint if it was to be a narrow body 400e it would continue down the production line at Mercedes if it was to be a 500e It would be trucked back to a different plant at Porsche along with a big box of parts Then Porsche would assemble it all into a car and send it back to Mercedes again For final inspection and delivery this absurd process took 18 days And it is one of the reasons this thing was so expensive in 1992. It cost $89,000 that was 35% more than a BMW m5 and in today's terms That's nearly Bentley money for a compact The outrageously hot Audi RS 2 wagon was built in the same factory which meant for a short time You could actually see Mercedes's and Audi's coming out of the same Porsche factory together But while the RS 2 was genuinely a Porsche Audi collaboration the 500e wasn't Everyone wants to believe that the 500e was a Porsche sports sedan But the only Porsche part on it is the battery cover which has a sticker on it from a supplier saying that Porsche bought it From them look Porsche did the engineering to bolt parts from one Mercedes model onto another Mercedes model Porsche didn't use any of its own parts and from all I can tell had no hand in tuning any of them But here's the thing Mercedes didn't need any help just about every magazine article declared the 500e the best car in the world Automobile said it three times in one article car and driver had literally no complaints other than the price I agree This is a car from back when Mercedes engineers outranked Mercedes accountants And that means that a Mercedes would be priced based on what it cost to engineer and then produce Not the other way around That's why they say and they really used to mean that a Mercedes-Benz is engineered like no other car in the world Because it was It's recirculating ball steering is more talkative than any modern cars Porsche and Ferrari included The engine is a torquey revvy acoustical masterpiece. The structure feels as stiff as anything today. The interior is Perfect. Okay, it's not perfect It starts out in second gear unless you boot it and then the traction control hates burnouts But both of those things can be fixed. So effectively what we have here is the best compact sedan in the world Upgraded with four Recaro bucket seats flared fenders and a Le Mans winning v8 under its hood but no Le Mans speeds because the 500e was electronically limited to 156 miles an hour as per the gentleman's agreement between BMW and Mercedes But I've heard people say all over the world. This car will do a hundred and seventy-eight miles an hour If you just remove the limiter, no It will require hardware changes for a 500e to go faster than 156 And that's because Mercedes chose a final drive ratio such that the engine is at its 6,000 rpm redline when the car is at its 156 mile an hour top speed to go any faster you need longer gears, but by choosing the short gear ratio it Decimated fuel economy ironic given that the 124 was originally designed for fuel economy but it means that Mercedes never sacrificed acceleration in the name of MPGs and So despite only four gears and a slush box the 500e hit 60 miles an hour in five and a half seconds Blasted through the quarter-mile at a hundred and one miles an hour and left the e34 BMW m5 For dead and not just in a straight line the Mercedes outbraked and out cornered the M car, too The 500e and the e500 as it was badged in its final year have gotten a lot more Enthusiast attention than any of the big motor Benz's that came before it and I don't think it's because it was Touched by the hands of Porsche. So was the 400e and you don't care about that car No, I think it's for three reasons. Number one. This is not a full-size luxury car. It's a compact car It's the size of today's Honda Civic To the 6.3 and 6.9 were basically cushy luxury sedans with a jetpack strapped to the back this was a comprehensive rethink of a luxury car with intergalactic power that had handling to match and Three the 500e is a w124 and the 124 has a well-earned reputation at being Perhaps the best engineered best proportioned best designed longest lasting sedan of all time They say it takes a village and in the case of the 500e it took Mercedes brainpower an Italian design American fuel economy regs Japanese competition and then Porsche's engineering So it took more than just a village it took half the world Including two car companies that were in the same village But all of those forces came together to create what was certainly then and probably still is today the world's most perfect sedan Okay, so you're just gonna keep the Ferrari framed out the entire time right yeah, okay I'm not some rich youtuber asking you to like and subscribe. Hey up up up up up up up up Keep the Ferrari out I'm an automotive journalist asking you to like and subscribe and that's because that's how YouTube works If you don't click those buttons YouTube doesn't know you liked what you've just seen and isn't gonna show you any more of it And if you don't like what you've just seen well join the club and by that I mean the Hagerty Drivers Club, which gets you access to this award-winning magazine as well as discounts on amazing stuff and if If you still don't like what you've seen Well, then just leave a nasty comment because that's how the internet works I need to go clean that up