Goo-Net Find Of The Week: A Mercedes 560SEL Limo Built By AMG

Welcome back to Goo-Net Find of the Week, a series in which we pretend we’re not procrastinating on a Friday afternoon by idly browsing the coolest online used car platform in the world, Japan’s Goo-Net Exchange.

One of the many things about Japanese car culture that endlessly fascinates us is how diverse it is. If you’re into a certain kind of car, no matter how rare or obscure, you can guarantee you’ll find at least a few people in Japan who share your passion. For instance, did you know that Japan was the main market for a run of stretched Mercedes 560SEL saloons built by a still-independent AMG in the late ’80s and early ’90s?

We didn’t until we stumbled upon this one, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the real deal. Information on these beasts is fairly scarce, but 1000SEL, the excellent and equally productivity-destroying site dedicated to ’80s tuner cars, tells us AMG built these in three different lengths. This one looks like the shortest, which added 30cm to the middle of the car.

It’s based, of course, on the W126 560SEL. Essentially the S63 AMG of its day, this saw a 5.5-litre V8 stuffed under the stately bonnet of the second-generation S-Class. Even as the range-topper version, though, it was only making 275bhp. It was the late ’80s, after all. This 1991 example’s been lightly enhanced with a front lip spoiler and some superb period-correct Mercedes Monoblock wheels – surely some of the finest ever offered by an OEM.

Unsurprisingly, though, the real excellence is happening inside. Just look at those huge, pillowy rear seats and the acres of space on offer – there’s probably more room in there than some Tokyo apartments. But most importantly, look between the front seats.

That right there is the finest 1991-spec cathode-ray tube technology for your viewing pleasure, complete with a VCR player – perfect for sitting back and watching such classics as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which we definitely didn’t just come up with by Googling ‘biggest movies of 1991’. We were recently wowed by our ability to play Mario Kart 8 in a Lexus LM, but for all we know, the original owner of this 560SEL could have been doing that over 30 years ago with the original game on a SNES.

Speaking of the original owner, we can’t possibly imagine who in Japan would have been ordering a brand-new, stretched, blacked-out AMG Mercedes limousine. Goodness, no. Whoever it was, though, used it sparingly, as did anyone who’s owned it since, because the odometer reads just 52,000km, or around 32,300 miles.

Unsurprisingly, the combination of condition and rarity means this limo doesn’t come cheap. The seller has it listed at ¥19.515 million, or a little over £98,000 at the time of writing. Incidentally, though, that’s a couple of grand less than what a brand new diesel S-Class starts at in the UK these days, and do you get a CRT TV in the back of one of those? No. No you do not.