[LandQuail]

Write in:

92-94 Merc 500E.

If you know why, you know why.

Überschleeper

Second write-in, Merc SL73 AMG. A Zonda engine in the last-gen SL. Über-über-Schadenfreude!
Whatever: How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie

Ü-Ber! Ü-Ber! Ü-Ber! everyone take two drinks.

Point is, AMG was always about subtlety. The 500E could pass by even the most salty gearhead unnoticed because the only outward evidence that it was once (and to a degree still is) one of the fastest sedans ever made are those delicious, provocatively engorged front fenders (wings, whatthafukeva).

If only modern stylists could still their quivering pens when sketching the bodywork of cars today (which, for the record, have never been faster or better) like Ze Germans once did in the '70s, '80s and early '90s, then we'd all inhabit a world made richer by the surviving art of the Q-car.

A tan 1973 Chevrolet Biscayne with an upholstered tube chassis and a 454 Rat Motor is a sleeper. A 500E is a Q-car; it's the same difference there is between an ex-Sammy Hagar Gibson Les Paul and an Ex-Niccolò Paganini Stradivarius. Done right, Q-cars are things of exquisite, elegant, timeless beauty, and crafting them has, in this Brave New Decade, become a lost art in this 'Quail's humble opinion.

The Scooby STiD and BMW 335 are modern nods to the Q-car, but they seem to miss the mark so thoroughly nailed by the 500E and the Merc 450 SEL 6.9 before it. The current crop of AMG-badged strumpet is about as subtle as a Max Mosley brothel-crawl, and we all know now how those can end in tears.

Sqüawk!