Her ladyship has decided that a Mercedes E350 estate will be her next car and keeps bombarding me with look-at-this bargain on CarGurus E-mails.

As a sanity check I looked at P38 prices. Not many but two seriously optimistic standouts were:-

1998 4.6 Limited Edition (which?) with 54,000 miles on the clock for £12,000 and a fiver change

2002 4.6 Vogue with 24,500 miles on the clock for £20,000 and a fiver change.

!! ???

Makes the up to £10,000 ish Japanese imports seem almost sensible.

Clive

Crazy prices but not to be unexpected for low mileage examples?

Even if I was very well off and really fancied a P38 the condition of the body, chassis and interior rather than the drivetrain would be more important than mileage... Mileage will affect the drivetrain sometimes in ways that are not easily evident but the proof is in the pudding with the bits I mentioned while an all new or rebuilt and good as new drivetrain can be had for a fraction of that figure. *Depending on how much I was going to spend - Spend a little and the priorities shift towards the drivetrain, spend a lot and the priorities shift toward the body and interior.

I've known mates pay over the odds for low mileage cars even when they've seen other examples with a bit more mileage that look and drive like they're fresher than the one they bought, never made sense to me.