Mercedes-Benz SL500

The R129-generation Mercedes-Benz SL debuted for the 1990 model year to tremendous pent-up demand. Its predecessor, the R107, had languished in production for 18 long years, and the new model was a quantum leap in design, engineering, safety, and performance. Delayed nearly a decade while Mercedes focused on its new small sedans (the 190E and 300E), Bruno Sacco’s R129 matured in the studio and emerged as a timeless, sophisticated, and impossibly elegant triumph of industrial design. Better yet, the R129 was as much substance as style, with safety and technical innovations that were a decade or more ahead of most every other car on the road.

For the U.S. market, the R129 was sold with two different DOHC inline-sixes, two different V-8s, and a V-12. Each model had its charms, but our favorite was the 500SL (a.k.a. the SL500 after Mercedes switched its naming scheme in 1994) with the M119 V-8. Sold between 1990 and 1998, this DOHC 5.0-liter was ultrahigh tech for its day. It even had variable intake-valve timing. Producing 322 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque, the 500SL was capable of period-sports-car acceleration with a muscle­-car soundtrack to match.