1998 Mercedes CL600; Flip, Drive, or Part Out

[tedly]

What are DMV back fees?

[tedly]

[SuperBuickGuy]

2 computer motors, if the entire car works - they're a blast, if anything (and I do mean anything) is wrong with it electronically... run away. I have a friend who bought the AMG Black* version of that for about the price of those keys.... looked like your car but had gremlins... he figured he could cheap out and fix it... nope, after spending several thousand, he scrapped it. The car was beautiful and black - but wow what a nightmare

*while it was black, there are people who doubling the new price isn't enough, for those people there is the Black version... the factory tuner, tuner's version.... I think when new the car was $160,000

[CTX-SLPR]

Picked up a 1998 Mercedes CL600 today. That's the big V12 powered GT Coupe that my Riviera is honestly kinda patterned on for what I want it to be like in terms of a big, powerful, and luxurious coupe that can eat the miles and handle spirited driving on twisty roads as well. Found it on Craigslist because I've always wanted a V12 car and the C140 chassis coupes are the perfect donors for the interior as they are a bucket front and bucket rear car without all of the crazy body modules to make them all work.
Back story on the car is it was the personal vehicle of the owner of a storage/salvage yard out in the Delta here in the Bay Area. He passed away and left the property to his son who has started trying to recapitalize on the property. Unfortunately his sister took all of the keys and has been saying NO to anyone who asked for them out of spite it seems. I paid her $500 for the keys since the car is pure scrap without them as this era of Mercedes has an RFID key system that will not work without the right key fob and the whole system is no longer available through MB USA. I'm not going to say how much I paid for the car but it fits well within the $5000 rules.



Plan at this point is unsure. I know I can make my money back either by flipping it or parting it out (or at least make enough money that justifies the parts I want from it) however it's such a cool and in such good shape I'm tempted to make it mine... Honestly, I don't want to deal with the $780 in DMV back fees on it so I'm pretty sure I'll drive it to be able to say it does drive and maybe check smog but I'm most likely to pass on the car whole or the pieces I don't need vs. having a new set of wheels.