Hey Cool Car Fans,
The other day I was cruising through Amazon television and I spot this movie American Gigolo with Richard Gere that came out back in 1980. I remember this film because I was about 13 years old when it came out and living in Florida at the time. Everyone was talking about this movie and what a big deal it was at the time, but I was just a kid, so what did I know. I remembered though that the song Call Me, by the singer Blondie, came out and it was featured in the film.
I decided to watch the movie for free on Amazon and I didn’t make it very far into the film because it was really boring, but the opening scene featuring a 1980 Mercedes Benz 450 SL being driven by Richard Gere was really cool. I’m including it in a Youtube video that I found in the post below and you can check it out for yourself and see what I mean. You can even rent the movie on Youtube now, which you certainly couldn’t do in 1980. If an ad pops up in the video be sure and close the ad.
This cool car back in 1980 was the bomb. Today a new 2018 Mercedes Benz 450SL nicely equipped sells for over $100,000. They start at an MSRP of around $88,200.
The 350SL and 450SL though from 1972 to 1980 had a unique look and body style with a 4.5l V8 engine under that hood that by 1980 with all the emissions regulations produced 160hp. It was under powered for such a big motor and heavy car compared to one today. It had such a cool iconic look that it was featured in this 1980 movie with Richard Gere being the American Gigolo. I wonder if he owns one of these vehicles today?
What’s pretty amazing though is the NADA retail value on these 1980 vehicles today. Mercedes Benz only produced about 6,000 of them a year, so it’s not like there are hundreds of thousands of these vehicles still around today. The original MSRP was $35,839, which back in 1980 was a lot of money for a car. Today, the retail on a 1980 Mercedes Benz 450SL ranges from $14,200 low retail to $42,200 high retail according to NADA.com. Haggerty is not quite as aggressive and definitely more conservative, going as high as $32,100 and as low as $5,700 (good luck finding one that cheap that still runs or doesn’t need $10,000 in work).
DRIVE A CLASSIC ICONIC CAR AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT DEPRECIATION LIKE YOU HAVE IN A NEW ONE
As The Cool Car Guy, I find cars like this for people who are into cars all the time. What’s really cool about this vehicle is that you can have me find you a 1980 Mercedes-Benz 450SL, depending on your budget, in a variety of conditions. If you only have $10,000 to $20,000 to invest in a cool classic car consider having me track down one of these for you. It might take some time to find the right car, but it’s worth it when you can get a vehicle that you know isn’t going to be losing money the minute you drive it off the lot.
I have written other articles talking about the benefits of going after vehicles that everyone else isn’t trying to buy. They are harder to find sometimes. How cool is it that a 1980 Mercedes Benz 450SL that sold new for around $35,000 is still worth more than a 2011 Toyota RAV4 that millions of people are trying to buy?
Which is one of the many reasons why I like really cool cars!
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Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant who owns CoolCarGuy.com, a licensed car dealership in Lone Tree, CO. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter @coolcarguy
It started with Tesla getting millions of people fired up about electric vehicles over the last decade and now Volvo is planning to go all electric in the future with their cars. Mercedes Benz has announced that they are going to be spending a $1 billion investment into their manufacturing hub in Alabama…
A petroleum based engine is designed to run on gasoline or diesel fuel and it can be rebuilt. When batteries wear out they are finished and have to be replaced and it can be extremely expensive. Some people argue that this is no different than rebuilding an engine that can also be expensive.
The challenge for electric vehicles is not the new car market for consumers, but it’s actually the used car market. Most people are afraid of buying electric vehicles that are five years old and having to replace the batteries in the future. The lifespan of batteries in electric vehicles today is about ten years, like in a Toyota Prius. It’s pretty difficult to convince someone to pay top dollar for a used electric vehicle when they are concerned about the battery life and the cost to replace the batteries. In 2015, Autoblog.com had an article titled 
Hey Cool Car Fans,
I decided I should take the time to write an article on why luxury vehicles are more expensive than other brands on the market. Many people assume that it’s all about just selling a vehicle for what the market will bear. Which is a nice way of saying that they think that all vehicles are the same and therefore they are ripping people off with a brand name. It’s true that the manufacturer needs to turn a profit, but when you buy a more expensive vehicle you are also getting a product that costs much more to produce. The components are more expensive to build the vehicle.
Brembo brakes are usually found on a vehicle like a Porsche 911 Turbo or a high-end Audi. You can grab a set of these over at 
Contrast that with a set of rotors for a 2015 Hyundai Elantra GT that you can grab for $122.83 and these are much better than what the manufacturer would put on. These brakes are not even close to the same in performance or quality which is why they are more 15 to 16 times less money!
Here’s the engine for a 2011 BMW 335xi, which I happen to own and drive as my daily driver here in Colorado. It’s a 6 cylinder twin turbo engine that produces 300hp. If you needed to replace this engine it would cost over at CarMonkeys.com close to $11,000 for a used one and that’s a deal.
As you start to go throughout the vehicles and add up the cost of components like brakes, tires (run flats on the BMW or Mercedes Benz for example), the transmissions, shocks, struts, all-wheel drive systems, sound dampening, the quality of interior, you discover that everything costs more on the luxury vehicle. You can keep going with this sort of exercise in other aspects of the cars.
Hey Cool Car Fans,
These cars are super cool, but the race series is not winning over new fans and that’s a problem for the future of the Formula One racing. John Malone’s Liberty Media has agreed to buy the racing series in a deal that values it at $4.4 billion, plus debt that will take it up to $8 billion. That’s big bucks for a racing venue, but this is Formula One racing, which is the Super Bowl of race car driving and a global audience.
Since the announcement was made back in September other news reports have said that they intend to put spending caps on race teams. This is a great idea because Formula One has been dominated by Red Bull and Mercedes Benz. This is because they can spend $400 million or more on putting together a racing team and other teams have been spent into ruin trying to compete, which has created an unfair advantage for smaller teams. It’s not a big win for the fans when two teams can dominate the racing circuit with better technology and loads of cash, so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out with the new owner.
Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
Recently, I had a former client contact me about getting out of her 2013 Nissan Rogue lease and into a “luxury” vehicle this time around, but she wanted a low lease payment without having to put a great deal of money down. I know that many people see the low lease payment offers on television and they believe the dealerships that they can lease an $35,000 to $50,000 vehicle for under $400 a month with nothing down.
Why do people buy used vehicles? Because they want someone else to take all the initial depreciation on the vehicle when it drives off the showroom floor. When you lease vehicle you are paying for the depreciation and the leasing company is setting a number on what they believe the vehicle is going to be worth, two, three, four or five years from now. They are taking an educated guess and rolling the dice that the vehicle is going to be worth X if you put on X number of miles during the term of your lease. As I just mentioned, many times the leasing company will be wrong and that’s a benefit for you!
When you lease a used vehicle, like the pictures of this 2015 Mercedes Benz GLK350 AWD, that I ran lease numbers on for my client, a great amount of depreciation has already taken place. For example, I ran a scenario with 12,000 miles a year instead of the 8,000 or 10,000 on a similar manufacturer’s lease with only $1,000 down, plus the first payment and 12,000 miles a year. The numbers below are based on approved credit and you need a minimum of a 680 FICO to qualify for a used vehicle lease with most leasing companies.