The Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 was a full-sized luxury performance car built by Mercedes Benz from 1968 to 1972. It featured the company’s powerful 6.3-litre M100 V8 from the flagship 600 (W100) limousine installed in the normally six-cylinder powered (but still premium) Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL (W109). The result was a nearly 2-ton sports sedan with muscle car performance. At the time of its release it was one of the world’s fastest four-door cars.

• 6.332-litre V8 with Bosch  fuel injection,
• 250 PS (184 kW; 247 hp) at 4000 rpm, 300 HP SAE gross at 4100 rpm
• 500.3 N⋅m (369.0 lb⋅ft) at 2800 rpm, 588 N⋅m (434 lb⋅ft) SAE at 3000 rpm
• Max. engine speed: 5250 rpm

Performance

• 0-62 mph (100 km/h): 6.6 seconds
• 0-100 mph (160 km/h) : 14.6 seconds
• Standing quarter-mile (~400 m) : 14.2 seconds
• Top speed : 220 km/h (136.7 mph) (factory figure)
• Introduced in Europe in late 1991, the A 124 Cabriolet was heavily altered from the Coupe it was based on. It gained more than 300 pounds of sheetmetal reinforcements and vibration dampers, as well as a windshield reinforced to act as a roll-over bar, which worked in conjunction with two spring-loaded roll-over bars behind the back seat. Those padded and trimmed vertical bars–patterned after the roll-over hoop used in the R129-chassis SL–would rise in 0.3 second in an emergency, or could be deployed hydraulically to act as rear head restraints. The result of this engineering was a 4,025-pound curb weight and Rick Titus’s comment in Popular Mechanics: “Here’s a convertible with so much internal integrity that its handling is indistinguishable from its steel-topped stablemates.”