Free guide · 1990–⁠1995 · M119 5.0 V8 · 320–⁠326 PS

Mercedes 500 E W124: what to check before you buy

What this car is, and the six questions that decide whether the one you are looking at is a good buy.

Last Real Engines · updated 19 October 2026

In this guide · 6 chapters

1. Who built it, and what they built
2. The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy
3. Which years, which specification
4. What it is worth
5. What it is actually like to own one
6. The buying guide — €24

Who built it, and what they built

A W124 saloon with the five-litre V8 of the 500 SL, wider wings, a lower body and four individual seats: that is the 500 E, renamed E 500 in 1993. It wears the three-pointed star, and Mercedes sold and delivered it. But it was put together in Zuffenhausen, by Porsche. Mercedes-Benz says it in one line, in its own press release for the car's thirtieth anniversary in 2020: "Porsche was involved as a project partner in its development and assembly." Porsche, the following year, put it more strongly: "Porsche was commissioned to design the fast touring saloon by what was then Daimler-Benz AG."

Both sentences are true, and neither tells you what each company actually did. This is what the two companies say, step by step, in their own words.

Why Porsche — two companies, two reasons

Mercedes' reason: its engineers were busy elsewhere. By Mercedes' account, its development capacity at the time was "to a considerable extent, taken up by work on the SL of the 129 model series and the S-Class of the W 140 model series. This was why, in December 1987, Porsche was awarded a development contract for the design and experimental series development of the base W 124 saloon with the eight-cylinder M 119 engine."

Porsche's reason: the body did not fit the line. Porsche dates the contract to 1988, and gives a different cause: Daimler-Benz "commissioned Porsche as a development service provider because its own production line for the 124 series in Sindelfingen was too small. The wider body of the 500 E … meant that the former could not produce the car itself." Michael Hölscher, Porsche's project manager for the car, explains it in Porsche's 2021 film: the body jigs in Sindelfingen left "literally no room to manoeuvre. And even minor modifications, like we made to the wing, meant that this car could no longer fit through the line."

The two reasons do not cancel each other out. Mercedes' development capacity was largely taken up elsewhere, and its own line could not take the wider body.

What Porsche did: the development

The work was done at Porsche's development centre in Weissach, under the working title "Project 2758". Hölscher describes the split: "Mercedes said they would look after the styling and aerodynamics, and Porsche would do everything else. Meaning, designing the body, chassis, exhaust system, engine peripherals, acoustics and vibration and the electrics." Porsche's German text says that, with "bis zu 90 Prozent" — up to 90 per cent — Porsche was responsible for nearly all the development work "die für die Integration der Antriebs- und Fahrzeugkomponenten notwendig waren": the work needed to integrate the drivetrain and the vehicle components. That is a share of the integration, not of the car.

What that meant in metal, by Porsche's account: new wings and bumper trim front and rear, a modified bulkhead and transmission tunnel to make room for the engine and its exhaust, changes at the rear of the bodyshell so the battery could live in the boot, and an engine that breathes "through the gap around the headlights". That intake worked, Porsche's prototype manager Michael Mönig remembers, but was "a bit too loud", so the intake hoses had to be insulated. Hölscher adds the electrics: "We installed completely new electrics here with a CAN-Bus system, which at the time was uncharted territory for both parties."

Who made what: the production, in five steps

Mercedes and Porsche describe the same route. Put together:

1. Mercedes, Sindelfingen: supplied the body parts, and the sub-assemblies — "manufactured here in Sindelfingen", in Hölscher's words — to Zuffenhausen. 2. Porsche, Zuffenhausen, the Reutter building in Werk 2: assembled the body from those parts "and with parts manufactured in-house, such as the distinctive front wings". Hölscher: "All the bodies for the 500 E came into being in this building." 3. Mercedes, Sindelfingen: painted the body — in Hölscher's words, "the exact colour the customer had ordered." 4. Porsche, Zuffenhausen, the Rössle-Bau: final assembly, "including the drivetrain supplied in its entirety by Mercedes-Benz", in Mercedes' words; "final assembly and engine installation", in Porsche's. 5. Mercedes, Sindelfingen: "delivery to customers and sales partners was handled by the Mercedes-Benz plant in Sindelfingen."

Porsche's summary: "The production process took 18 days, and each 500 E made the journey from Zuffenhausen to Sindelfingen twice." The line started at ten cars a day and, by Porsche's account, was soon raised to twenty. On 10 October 1994 Mercedes handed the ten-thousandth car to its first owner, Hans Herrmann, a Mercedes-Benz works racing driver in 1954 and 1955 — at the Zuffenhausen assembly plant.

So, who built it? Porsche engineered the integration, assembled the bodies and assembled the cars. Mercedes did the styling and the aerodynamics, supplied the body parts, painted every body, supplied the whole drivetrain — engine and gearbox — and sold and delivered the car. One Mercedes text, from 2019, has Sindelfingen building the body as well; Mercedes' own 2020 release and Porsche both say Porsche assembled it, and we follow those two.

The engine

The engine is a Mercedes engine: the M 119, the four-valve V8 of the 500 SL. Mercedes adds that it was "the same M 119 that Mercedes-Benz used in the Sauber-Mercedes C9 – equipped in that case with two turbochargers – to win the 1989 World Sports Car Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans."

4,973 cc, light-alloy block, two overhead camshafts per bank, the intake camshafts adjustable, driven by a double roller chain. At launch, 326 PS (240 kW) at 5,700 rpm and 480 Nm at 3,900 rpm. From October 1992, 320 PS (235 kW) at 5,600 rpm and 470 Nm — lowered, Mercedes says, "in order to reduce both fuel consumption and pollutant emissions." The name did not change until 1993, so a 500 E can have either figure.

Two things set it apart from the 500 SL's engine, by Mercedes' account. The injection is the electronic Bosch LH-Jetronic with a hot-wire air-mass sensor, "which was deployed here for the first time at Mercedes-Benz", in place of the SL's mechanical-electronic KE system. And the block is lower — "now the same height as the 4.2-litre version of the M 119."

The car around it

Mercedes' 1990 product information lists what changed: the body 56 mm wider, the tracks 37 mm wider at the front and 38 mm at the rear, flared wings for 225/55 ZR 16 tyres on 8 J x 16 eight-hole alloy wheels, and a body Mercedes' press releases give as 23 mm lower. Key front-axle parts — "insbesondere die Querlenker", the wishbones above all — came from the R 129 SL, and so, by Mercedes' 2020 account, did the brake system. Self-levelling rear suspension is standard. The battery moved to the boot, the fuel tank grew from 70 to 90 litres, and there are four seats: Porsche explains that the differential "was so large that there was no room for seat suspension in the middle of the rear bench."

One gearbox: a four-speed automatic. Mercedes in 1990: "Ein Schaltgetriebe kann nicht eingebaut werden" — a manual gearbox cannot be fitted. Traction control (ASR) is standard. And Mercedes' archive notes two versions that were never made: "A 4MATIC variant was omitted, as was a right-hand drive version."

How many there are

10,479, built by April 1995 — and Mercedes counts the E 500 and the E 60 AMG in that number. The archive: "a total of 10,479 (until 04.1995, incl. E 60 AMG)"; the E 60 AMG's own units are "not separately documented." Porsche presents the same 10,479 as 500 Es, and its project manager rounds it to "around 10,500." We found no split by year, or between 500 E and E 500, from Mercedes. The one buying guide that gives a split also has the E 500 built until September 1995, months after Mercedes' own end date, so we do not use it. The same guide names Germany, the USA and Japan as the biggest markets; we found no Mercedes figures by country.

The years this guide covers

Last Real Engines writes about cars built from 1995 to 2015, and this one is mostly older: pre-production began in September 1990, series production in February 1991, and the last cars were built in April 1995. This guide covers the whole run.

How the figures in this guide work

How much work each job is, not what it costs. Every point in the buying guide carries an effort level — an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop — plus a line saying whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it.

There are no prices, and that is deliberate. What a job costs depends on which country you are in and which workshop you walk into, so a figure we cannot verify is worse than no figure. If you want an amount, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every effort level in the buying guide becomes your own number, in your own currency.

None of this is advice about one particular car, because we have not seen the car you are looking at. Have every one of them inspected before you buy, by someone who knows this engine.

The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy

These cars are now more than thirty years old, and on this model what has been replaced, and what the papers say, tell you more than the paint. Six questions.

1 · Is it a 500 E — and is it the car its papers say?

The 500 E's type number, 124.036, is the same one Mercedes gives the E 60 AMG. The 400 E and E 420 are V8 W124 saloons too, with a smaller M 119 and a type number of their own. Mercedes never built a right-hand-drive 500 E. And the car was built in two factories, so even an honest seller may not know the whole story. What tells you which car you are looking at is in the buying guide.

2 · The timing chain's guide rails — has anybody replaced them?

The camshafts are driven by a chain, and the chain runs on plastic guide rails. Three buying guides name those rails as a weak point — two written about this car, one about the whole W124 range. mobile.de's magazine writes that they "werden im Alter brüchig" — become brittle with age — and that in the worst case the chain can jump or break. On an engine this old, that is the question that matters most.

3 · The engine wiring harness — is the insulation still whole?

A failing engine harness is, in mobile.de's words, "eine weitere typische Schwachstelle" — another typical weak point — of the four-valve W124 petrol engines, with misfires and a rough idle as the signs. On this car the engine runs on electronic ignition, electronic injection and an electronic throttle, so a harness fault does not always look like one.

4 · Rust — on a W124 body with its own wings?

The 500 E rusts where other W124s rust, by the buying guides written about this car. But the front wings Porsche made for it are not the wings of an ordinary W124, and mobile.de notes that parts specific to the 500 E are harder to find than the W124's ordinary wear parts.

5 · The parts only this model has — front axle, brakes, self-levelling?

AUTO BILD Klassik, in 2010, named — besides the engine and the gearbox — the front axle, the brakes and the hydropneumatic self-levelling at the rear as the 500 E-specific items that get expensive. And mobile.de adds that the weight and the power in the front of the car wear its ball joints and track rods.

6 · How far has it really gone — and does the history show it?

An English-language buying guide published online in 2017 — we call it the 2017 buying guide from here on — calls these cars "capable of huge mileages", and adds: "beware, because many have been clocked." The same guide calls the gearbox reliable with regular oil changes and says it "will wear out if neglected." The invoices are the evidence for both.

What the answers add up to

On a 500 E with its identity confirmed, its guide rails done, a sound harness, a solid underside and a history that hangs together, an owner mostly faces the ordinary work of a car this old. On a car without those answers, you cannot tell whether the heavy jobs are still to come — and on this engine, one of them is the kind you do not want to discover on the road. That is what separates a cheap 500 E from a good one.

Each of these six has more behind it than a question can show. The buying guide takes them apart one by one, adds the things that are simply more than thirty years old, and says for each one how much work it is, what tells you about it at a viewing, and whether it has to be done now, within a year or two, or not at all. It comes with a card you print and take with you, with the checks in the order you do them.

Which years, which specification

Three periods, two names. The 500 E with 326 PS, built until October 1992. The 500 E with 320 PS, from October 1992. And the E 500, from mid-1993: Mercedes says the 124 series became the E-Class "In June 1993", Porsche says "In the summer of 1993", and Mercedes' archive starts the E 500 in July 1993. The output changed in October 1992, not with the name — so "500 E = 326 PS" is only true of the earlier cars.

The 1993 facelift. By Mercedes' 2019 account: "an integrated radiator, colourless turn signal cover lenses at the front, two-tone covers for the rear lamps and modified lines at the rear." The engine figures did not change with it.

Standard and optional, at launch. Mercedes' 1990 product information lists as standard: air conditioning, the Becker Mexico 2000 radio, electric windows all round, electric front seats, cruise control, central locking with comfort closing, headlamp wipers, rear head restraints, the self-levelling rear suspension and fourteen metallic paints. The seats are sports seats front and rear; cloth was standard and leather optional, each in five colours, and the wood is burr walnut. The 1991 brochure lists among the options driver and passenger airbags, an alarm, automatic climate control, an electrically adjustable steering column, a sunroof and seat heating. What the car has not got matters too: Mercedes ruled out the adaptive damping (ADS) and the "Sportline" suspension option for the 500 E.

The E 500 Limited. Shown at Geneva in March 1994, "limited to 500 units", in sapphire black (DB 009) or brilliant silver (DB 744), with grey, red or green leather, bird's-eye maple or burr walnut, and wheels "similar to those of the "EVO II"." Mercedes gives its production period as 1994 to 1995. The 500 is the brochure's figure; Mercedes does not say how many were actually built, and you will see other numbers in adverts. The last E 500 of all, a 1995 Limited with 422 km on it, was on show at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in 2026.

Two cars to keep apart. The E 60 AMG — a six-litre M 119 with 381 PS, built from September 1993 to November 1994 — carries the same type number and is counted inside the 10,479, but it is not the car this guide is about. The 400 E, later E 420, has a 4.2-litre M 119 with 279 PS, a type number of its own, and a body that, in Mercedes' words, "did not even feature the discreetly flared wheel arches". Mercedes sold 22,802 of them — enough, it says, to "put them ahead of the more powerful cars in the model series."

Left-hand drive, everywhere. No right-hand-drive version was made. In Britain, Japan or anywhere else that drives on the left, the car you look at will be left-hand drive, or a conversion.

Beyond that, look for a car nobody has modified. Factory wheels, standard ride height, the original brakes and the original engine control. AUTO BILD Klassik wrote in 2010 that the cars in demand were the ones in original condition, without lowering. The 2017 buying guide lists what owners change — engine software, the speed limiter, wheels, brakes — and a standard car usually tells you something about how it was kept.

What it is worth

This is the hardest thing to establish on your own, and it does as much as anything to decide whether you buy well. We are not going to give you a price list — it varies by country and by month, and it would be out of date before you used it. We are going to give you the method.

On this car, the history sets the price. Two 500 Es with the same mileage can be very different cars: one with its guide rails done, a sound harness and a solid underside, and one without. That difference usually outweighs colour, specification and even mileage. Expect a high reading — the 2017 buying guide calls these "the ultimate autobahn-eaters" — and judge how the car got there rather than how far it went. AUTO BILD Klassik warned in 2010 of "viele Fahrzeuge mit Wartungsstau": many cars with a maintenance backlog.

There are three kinds of car for sale, and each one deserves a different offer.

The documented car. Full history, invoices tied to mileages, the big jobs on paper, and an owner who knows what was done and when. Asking price at the top of the market, usually justified.

The tidy car with no paperwork. Drives well, sounds right, and the owner says it has always been looked after. The hardest of the three, because the big items on this car — the guide rails, the harness, the rust under the car — are exactly what you cannot judge on a test drive.

The project. Known faults, price adjusted to match. A 500 E that misfires, or has rust in the places that carry the axles, with no diagnosis, is not a project but an unknown.

Two special cars, two separate markets. The E 500 Limited and the E 60 AMG are priced on their own terms, and proving that a car really is one is part of the price. Do not compare them with an ordinary 500 E.

How to set the three against each other. Take the asking price, work through the questions in this guide — and the lists in the buying guide, if you have it — and add up what is coming in the first two years. Call that the entry price, and compare entry prices rather than asking prices.

Where to look: your country's big classified sites, the Mercedes specialists and the auction sites. Mercedes' own classic-car dealer, ALL TIME STARS, said in 2019 that it regularly has 500 Es and E 500s on offer. In a right-hand-drive country, expect to be looking at left-hand-drive cars, and often at imports. Follow the market for a month before you go and see anything.

What it is actually like to own one

It is a four-door Mercedes of the early nineties that goes like a sports car of the same years, and most of what was written about it comes back to that contrast. Mercedes advertised it at launch with a slogan: "Fire and silk". Mercedes quotes auto motor und sport, issue 15/1990: "As good-natured as a fairy-tale uncle, as agile as a nimble sports car and, to top it all, comfortable as well?" Road & Track, in 1992: "It looks right (low slung, intimidating, but not showy …). It sounds great (nothing beats the thunder of a big V-8)."

It is quick, and it does not shout about it. 6.1 seconds to 100 km/h by Mercedes' archive, with a four-speed automatic. Hölscher, Porsche's project manager, remembers a trip to Lake Constance with three colleagues: they talked the whole way, until one of them "looked at the speedometer and had quite a shock when he realised the needle was showing 250 km/h." Thirty years later, Hölscher drove one again for Porsche and said: "Its handling is magnificent. The longitudinal acceleration is excellent, the brakes are outstanding."

It is not perfect in the wet. The 2017 buying guide reports that testers found the ride and handling excellent in the dry but "let down by a lack of poise in the wet", and the traction control "over-protective". It adds that modern tyres help.

It is thirsty, and the tank was sized for it. Mercedes' figures for the early cars: 10.7 litres per 100 km at a steady 90 km/h, 12.3 at 120 and 17.5 in the urban cycle; from October 1992, 10.3, 11.9 and 16.9. The tank holds 90 litres — taken, Mercedes says, out of the boot, which is 485 litres instead of 520. One owner quoted in the 2017 guide gets "27-28mpg" on the motorway and "about 20mpg" around town in his 1994 E 500.

There is not much room under the bonnet. Mönig, with the bonnet open: "there is not a lot of space indeed. My hand barely fits here." And mobile.de puts it the same way: even skilled hands, it writes, "haben es da bei Reparaturen schwer" — have a hard time of it on repairs. That shows in how long some jobs take, and the buying guide says which.

Parts are a mix. The W124 was built in its millions, and mobile.de notes that its ordinary wear parts are plentiful; parts specific to the 500 E are harder. Mercedes-Benz Classic says further offerings for owners of classic cars are "currently in preparation"; it does not say which.

What one owner reports. Of his 1994 E 500, in the 2017 buying guide: "Apart from a cracked distributor cap and worn rear top shock bushes it has given no problems. The front wings started to bubble, so I replaced them." One car, not a statistic — but it is a fair picture of the kind of thing these cars need.

What it gives back. A V8 fitted so tightly that Porsche's assemblers checked the specified 12 mm of clearance around it with a ball glued to a rod, four proper seats, and a car that looks like a taxi until it does not. Whether it is also an investment is not something this guide can tell you. It is a car you buy to drive.

The buying guide — €24

Everything above is what the car is. This is what you check.

Six faults that belong to this engine, taken apart one by one, with how much work each repair is and how to tell which of them you are looking at. Fifteen things that are simply more than thirty years old, every one with how much work it is, what tells you about it at a viewing, and whether it has to be done now, within a year or two, or not at all. Where these cars rust, from the 2017 buying guide and auto motor und sport — including the rear axle mountings, the one job in this guide that is a week or more. How to tell a 500 E or E 500 from the E 60 AMG that shares its type number, and what the birth certificate from Mercedes-Benz Classic can and cannot settle. The viewing in eleven steps, including the two moments that come only once. The sentences you say to the seller, and how to build an offer out of what you found.

And a card you print and take with you — seventy-two lines, in the order you do them. That comes as a separate file, because nobody wants to print a whole guide to take a few pages to a car park.

This is what one of the fifteen looks like

5 · The self-levelling rear suspension

An hour or two for the spheres · Expensive part, easy access

Every 500 E and E 500 has it. Mercedes' archive gives the rear suspension as "multilink suspension with hydropneumatic level control" for both, and as "hydropneumatic level control optional" on the 400 E and E 420. The product information explains why it is standard: "um unter allen Betriebsbedingungen ein konstantes Fahrzeugniveau zu gewährleisten" — to keep the car at a constant level under all operating conditions. The same document says the adaptive damping system ADS "ist für den 500 E nicht vorgesehen" — was not offered on the 500 E.

How the W124's system works, in Practical Classics' description of the range: a pressurising pump under the bonnet, and "unlike the traditional Citroën application, the Mercedes system had a fixed ride height and employed rear coil springs to maintain the static ride height when parked." What fails, according to the 2017 buying guide: "Front springs and self-levelling rear suspension spheres can fail – check it sits level, especially when loaded." AUTO BILD counts "die hydropneumatische Niveauregulierung an der Hinterachse" among the 500 E-specific parts that make a repair expensive. No source we could open says how many years a set of spheres lasts.

Two things follow for a viewing, by our reading of Practical Classics' description. The pump sits under the bonnet, so a load in the boot is judged after the drive, with the engine running — not while the car stands with the engine off. And when the car is parked, its coil springs hold the height, so a rear that sits low after standing is a question for the springs, item 7, as much as for the level control.

Leave it when the rear sits level after the car has stood, and is level again after the drive with a load in the boot. Now, as a diagnosis, if it sits low: the springs and the level control both, before anybody prices spheres.

And this is how the card reads

• 1 · Round the outside, before anybody starts it
• 2 · The boot and the cabin
• 3 · Under the bonnet, cold · engine off, key out
• 4 · The cold start · the seller starts it; nobody revs it
• 5 · The drive · gently until it is fully warm
• 6 · The warm engine · idling, hands clear

What €24 buys, put next to what it saves

Rotten rear axle mountings are a week or more in the workshop. The chain guide rails, done in time, are two or three days — and an engine whose chain has jumped has no effort line at all. The guide is €24. It will not stop any of that from being needed — but it does tell you which of them you are looking at before you agree a price, and that is the whole of the difference between paying for a car and paying for someone else's postponed maintenance.

Why there are no prices in it

Because a price we cannot verify is worse than no price, and because a price would be wrong for most of the people reading this anyway. Workshop rates across Europe differ widely, and so do parts prices. A quote from a specialist in one country tells you nothing in another.

What does not change is how much work a job is — that follows from what has to come off the car. So every point in the guide says whether it is an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop, with a labour figure where a source gives one. And it says whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it, which is what lets you tell a fair quote from a bad one.

If you want a figure, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every effort level in the guide becomes your own number, in your own currency. One question, and the answer is actually true for you.

How this guide was put together

Because you should know before you pay for it.

• Every fault and symptom comes from a source the guide names, the manufacturer's own documents first. The effort levels are our assessment, unless a source gives the hours.
• Where only a magazine or a buying guide speaks — on the chain guides, on the wiring harness — it says which one, and where nobody we could open speaks at all, it says that too.
• The effort of every job is counted item by item and checked against the list before every edition.
• It says as plainly what you can leave alone as what you have to do. Thirteen of the fifteen age points start from leave it.

Leave your email address at the checkout and both files arrive straight away: one guide and one card, as two pdfs. No subscription, no account.

Have every car inspected before you buy by someone who knows this engine. This is general information about the model and not advice about a specific car.

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