12/08/2025
Now when, apart from a Mercedes club meeting and even then I doubt this occurs very much, have you seen two C140 Mercs in a day?
You haven’t have you? Well it happened to me yesterday. The 500 was in Brunswick and the 600 across the bridge, though I didn’t go that way, in Williamstown.
Did you know the V12 was part of the original product plans for the W140?
Here’s some schizzle off the old Wiki..
Development of the W140 began in 1981, with official introduction originally set for September 1989. Several different design proposals were studied from 1982 until 1986, when a definitive design proposal by Olivier Boulay was selected on 9 December 1986. Several engineering prototypes were evaluated from early 1987, with the final exterior design locked in September 1987. The design patents were filed on 23 February 1988 in West Germany and 23 August 1988 in the United States.[4] The lead designer Bruno Sacco attributed Jaguar’s XJ40 sedan and BMW’s E32 7-Series as a major influence on the W140’s design.[5][6] The initial exterior design proposal called for the two different cooling grille designs to denote the lower and upper model, similar to the idea of round and rectangle headlamps on the W123 (1976-1985). Innovative metal-forming technology allowed the extension of the engine hood/bonnet to the front bumper, with the grille placed inside the extruded metal. The W140 became the second model after the R129 (1989-2001) to have this extruded metal grille.
When BMW introduced a new 7-Series (E32) in 1986, the first post-war German passenger V12 engine (M70) was offered. This surprise announcement forced Mercedes-Benz to delay the introduction of the W140 by eighteen months to 1991. The delay allowed Mercedes-Benz to develop the new V12 engine and to rearrange the engine bay to accommodate the larger V12 engine, along with upgrading the brake system. The final development prototypes were completed in June 1990, with pilot production models being built from June 1990 to January 1991.
