Mercedes-Benz 500SL (R107)

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Looking more handsome with every passing year, the W107 series Mercedes SL was built at a time when the Stuttgart firm still had a reputation for building cars that made granite feel a bit flimsy.

Fast, comfortable and discreetly understated, it has a matchless ability to munch up the miles for year after year without ever seeming to falter. No wonder it stayed in production fundamentally unaltered from 1971 until 1989.

The cars came in a wide range of engine sizes using both straight-six and V8 engines, but cream of the crop was undoubtedly the mighty 500SL, launched in 1980 with a 242bhp all-alloy V8 that propelled the bruiser from 0-60 in 7.2 seconds on its way to a top speed of 140mph.

A big favourite among the Hollywood jet-set (two thirds of all these cars went to the States), no episode of Dallas was complete without an SL sweeping up to a Texan billionaire's ranch.

You do not need a ranch, a big hat, or a billion dollars to buy this fabulous example of German engineering which looks an absolute bargain at the estimate quoted. Our vendor bought the car at the UK’s leading classic car auction house (no false modesty here) but has hardly used the car in the year that he has owned it. Prior to that, the car was in storage for six years.

The car comes with 97,000 miles on the clock which is nothing for a five-litre V8 which is mated to the usual automatic gearbox. The 14 service stamps and 13 past MOTs on file back up the mileage and give some reassurance to potential buyers.

The vendor hopes to have a new MOT for the car by the time of the sale, but at its last MOT (August 2018), it passed with only one advisory (o/s/f tyre perished) and has had virtually no use since.