2002 Mercedes-Benz SL500 Silver Arrow, final year R129

This 2002 Mercedes-Benz SL500 Silver Arrow is finished in Brilliant Silver over a two tone silver and charcoal interior, on the AMG Monoblock wheels, and is offered from Hermanus by hermanus_r129, about this seller, the executor of the late owner's estate. It shows 118,900km and is a final year R129, the last of the shape before the R230 replaced it in 2002.

The seller is an executor rather than an owner, and that shapes what this listing can tell a bidder. He has answered every question that can be verified from the car, the invoices in the deceased's file or the photographs, and he declined the question about how the car was used and stored between 2016 and 2023 on the grounds that the only person who could answer it has died. That decline is published with the rest of the transcript. It is the largest single gap in the lot and it is not one the seller can close.

What the documents do show: a Mercedes dealer service book stamped to 2004 at 41,200km, then loose invoices found in the file for an alternator, belt and crankcase breather in 2011, a major service and transmission service in 2016, brakes and front tyres in 2019, and a roadworthy and general service in 2023. The executor serviced the car himself before listing it, replaced the battery and flushed the brake fluid, and photographed the file exactly as he found it rather than reordering it. A Mercedes-Benz data card has been requested and had not been returned when the lot went live, which is the document that would confirm the Silver Arrow specification from the factory.

The flaws stated are pixel loss across the lower third of the instrument cluster, an air conditioning system that cools weakly at idle, damp staining in the boot carpet under the roof pump that has dried out and has not been traced, front tyres dating from 2019, and a hardtop included without its lifting stand and without confirmation that it is the car's original one. The roof raises and lowers on the switch and its hydraulics have never been pressure tested. Bidders should read the transcript before the description on this lot.

The R129 ran from 1989 to 2002 and was engineered in the period when Mercedes still built to a standard and sent the bill afterwards. It introduced a pop up roll bar that deployed in under three tenths of a second, an electrohydraulic soft top with fifteen hydraulic cylinders, and a body that has aged into one of the least dated shapes of its decade. The 500SL badge became SL500 in 1994 when Mercedes reversed its nomenclature, which is why an early car and a late one wear the same words in a different order.

The late cars are the ones to have mechanically. The M113 V8 replaced the earlier M119 in 1999, the biodegradable wiring harness problem that haunts 1992 to 1995 cars was long gone, and the 722.6 five speed automatic is a known quantity. What arrived instead is a set of age failures that are electrical and hydraulic rather than mechanical: cluster pixels, roof cylinders, air conditioning.

The Silver Arrow was the send off. Mercedes built it for the final year in Brilliant Silver with a two tone interior, the sport package and the AMG Monoblock wheels, as a run out edition marking the end of the R129 line. Verifying one is a data card exercise, because the parts that make it are parts that can be fitted to any late SL500, and the badge on the wing is not evidence.