by A unique car for the connoisseur has been spotted in Kharkiv. We are talking about a rather ordinary-looking Mercedes, which can actually be considered a “gold nugget on wheels.”
After all, this is not just any Merc, but an original Mercedes-Benz SL in the R129 body, and most importantly, it’s the SL73 AMG version! To make it clearer, it is essentially the grandfather of the Pagani Zonda hypercar, which received its engine from this Mercedes.
As TopGir already wrote, this very car was chosen as the donor for the Pagani Zonda R. To be more precise, the 7.3-liter engine was borrowed from the Mercedes SL73 AMG R129, which in its “stock” form develops 518 hp. With it, the early ’90s SL (produced with no significant changes from 1990 to 2002) can accelerate to 100 km/h in 4.8 seconds. Back in the day, this car cost around $200,000. Currently (if you’re lucky), it can be bought for several hundred thousand dollars or euros (in this case, it doesn’t really matter).
There is various information about the SL73 AMG R129 production run, and they vary greatly. According to some data, 85 units of such cars were produced (there is also information about 90+), according to others – even fewer than 73 SLs were made – around 40 units. And the most interesting thing, although not confirmed by official data, is the rumor that out of the 85 cars, 55 units were bought by the Sultan of Brunei, who owns about 3000 (!) supercars and other exclusive cars, including unique samples.
One way or another, let us emphasize once again that the 129th Mercedes-Benz SL73 in Ukraine is like Rinat Akhmetov in ATB.
P.S. As mentioned, in 2020 the SL73 was being sold in Ukraine for 350 thousand euros. And there is information that we have several such cars.
Also, we recommend looking at what the Pagani Zonda hypercar and the budget Rover 45 have in common
