Sometimes, the clever money goes incognito. AMG-badged Mercedes have cachet (and greater residual values), but some cooking Benzes offer most of the performance for less of the folding.
Second only to the later CLK550 in terms of grunt, the only thing the CLK500 did better than accelerate was depreciate, a fate which cursed many large-engined GTs. In 2024, the market position of the CLK500 (A209) can be likened to where the old R107 SEC was a quarter of a decade ago.
Still luxurious, this model did not use Mercedes’ brilliant-when-working (but
