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Old 05-30-2021, 10:22 AM
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audioguy3107 audioguy3107 is offline
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Default My New Ride Is Coming! (Hopefully)

My new car journey is apparently nearing an end! I was going to do a thread months ago but was honestly not sure that my order was going to go through due to the automotive chip shortage, COVID delays, etc.

Here's what happened....I currently drive a 2014 Mercedes Benz CLS 550, I've always enjoyed it, nice comfortable care to drive. I was planning on trading it in for something next year, when it had about 85 - 90,000 miles on it. I've kept it looking almost new. So back in late December, I took it in for a service, one of my injector coils went out but it was an inexpensive repair, couple of hundred dollars. When I went to pick it up, the service advisor looked at me and said that in their inspection, they...."found something". Immediately I thought...oh hell. They found several oil seals leaking. So I asked him, well, how much would it be to fix it like it's supposed to? He responded with a stutter and then........$13,000! He told me they could go in there, clean it up nice and do a temporary seal but that would still run about $3,500 and would probably last about 1 to 2 years. He told me that it's not bad right now, doing nothing I'd be OK for probably about 6 to 12 months, but then you'd start seeing oil. So like any good Audio Aficionado member, I thought, YES, new car time!

I did a ton of looking and reading and after a month or two, I decided on a 2021 E 53 AMG. I thought about going for a BMW M5 or E 63 AMG, but I'm still toting the kids around etc and those two really would be a bit of overkill. At the beginning of February, I put in an order and spec'd it out. It took 3 weeks just to find an allocation here in Atlanta but finally got one scheduled to be built at the end of May. I spoke to my dealer on Friday and he said it's locked and should be done the second week of June. I have a couple of pictures that I snapped back in January of some customer's car with the same color scheme that I ordered...I think it's really sharp, going with the Selenite Grey Metallic, black AMG wheels and Nappa greyblack interior:









Car and Driver has the E 53 as the number one car in it's class as well as Motor Trend giving the E class the Car of the Year award in '21. Here's some pics of the interior I went with. Performance wise, it's MB's inline six cylinder with 429 HP and reached 0-60 in 3.9 sec and STILL gets almost 31 MPG on the highway!!!!! That's what I'm talking about!
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Last edited by audioguy3107; 05-30-2021 at 10:32 AM.
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Old 05-30-2021, 10:29 AM
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I'm going with the Titanium grey/black Nappa leather interior with red stitching, it's pretty much awesome. You have an option of black or red seat belts....I'm not a flashy guy whatsoever, but I said wth and am doing the RED seat belts. I just think it looks seriously cool, I must be about the only one since most if not all the cars I saw online have the black belts.





Euro model w/red seat belts:




Car and Driver review:
https://www.caranddriver.com/mercedes-amg/e53
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Library: Speakers: Avalon Acoustics Isis, Subwoofers: (2) REL Acoustics 212SE Amplification: D’agostino Momentum preamplifier, D’agostino S250 stereo amplifier Digital: dCS Rossini CD/SACD transport, dCS Rossini DAC/streamer/master clock. Analog: Brinkmann Taurus table, Lyra Etna Lambda, Audio Research Ref. Phono 3
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Old 05-30-2021, 10:34 AM
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Buck... Super Sweet ride! Big Congrats
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Old 05-30-2021, 10:35 AM
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here's a couple of stock photos:



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Old 05-30-2021, 11:07 AM
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Default My New Ride Is Coming! (Hopefully)

Beautiful car Buck, that’s going to be a really cool ride. But you’re definitely going to need a new hat to go with those seatbelts.
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Old 05-30-2021, 11:14 AM
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Very nice - congratulations!
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Old 05-30-2021, 12:28 PM
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Congrats, that is a beautiful car!
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Old 05-30-2021, 12:58 PM
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Beautiful car. Congrats buck!
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Old 05-30-2021, 03:32 PM
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Buck... congrats!
Cool ride indeed.

But it's not cool that a Mercedes with only 80K miles on it has this kind of problem...
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Old 05-30-2021, 03:43 PM
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Very nice. Terrific looking ride.
Wife's C350 Sport ~same color as your pic's and over 90K miles. Also had an oil leak (cam seal gaskets), but thankfully was only an $800 fix. Keep trying to talk her in something new. But, her car is like a billfold for us guys.................. once comfortable she never wants to change.
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