Rare Hand-Made Porsche-Built Mercedes-Benz E500 Spotted on the Way To Work

Normally, I’m not much of a follower of German sedans, but I know well enough to think that flared fenders on a factory body might mean something special. Exactly what, I wasn’t sure, but the flares and “E500” badge, which sounded familiar from what some friends may have mentioned before, caught my interest enough to grab a quick photo of it before the light turned green and the Smoke Silver sedan disappeared into the city.

What I didn’t know at the time was that this E500 was a rather rare bird, only made for a few years and hand-built by Porsche of all things, taking (according to this old SuperStreet article I found) 18 days to build.

The E500 and slightly more powerful but less-brake equipped 500E were not just built by Porsche but apparently had Porsche-specific suspension tuning as well. In a way this is like an odd cousin of the Porsche Panamera.

And to think, without those slight flares to the fenders, I’d never have noticed it…

Text and photography by Bryce Womeldurf