Brief history of the Mercedes-Benz SEC

Like I did for my 420th point, this is another ‘special number’ post, this for my 500 points. For 420 it had to be something with cannabis, so I shared a video of a car made out of cannabis; pretty logical, right? This time, though, the range is much larger: anything somehow related to the number 500, could be production amount, could be displacement, could be about Nascar 500 (don’t look that up on UrbanDictionary). Obviously, I went for displacement. Yep, I’m talking about the Mercedes-Benz 500 SEC.

In 1981, after finishing production of the SLC, Mercedes was looking to introduce a new top-of-the-range coupé, and so they took the W126 S-Class presented in 1979 and completely restyled it to create the SEC, which would be presented at the 1981 Frankfurt IAA. The watchword for this show was “Saving Energy”, thing that the german manufacturer nailed with the Energy Concept engines, redesigned from previous sedans to drastically reduce fuel consumption and pollutants leaving, however, a slight reduction in power figures. Needless to say, Mercedes-Benz stole the show with their 380 SEC and 500 SEC.

To give the car that fantastically hot coupé look, the designers removed the centre pillar, which you would say weakened the car in great manner. In response to the removal of these safety features, the overengineering-focused minds of Mercedes engineers reinforced the A-pillar to the point of making the SEC the safest of the S-Class range despite the fact that the B-pillar was missing. To give you an idea of how great-looking a car it was (and still is), Motorsport Magazine said that, with the AMG kit, the SEC was guilty for as many neck fractures as a Ferrari 512BB, a Ferrari, with pop-ups.

There's no doubt that passing interest in the car when out amongst the traffic, ran at a level matched only by Ferrari's fuel-injected 512BB in our experience!

The car came with ABS and disc brakes at every wheel, it sat four people and used a 4-speed automatic transmission to transfer the power from the engine. At first, two motor variants were offered: a 3.8 L 205hp and the 5.0, which packed 231hp, both V8’s. In 1985, along with the whole W126 S-class range, the facelifted SEC was presented, once again in Frankfurt, showcasing redesigned front bumpers, side skits and wheels as well as two new V8’s: the 218hp 420 (blaze it), substitute for the 380, and the mighty 560, first commercialised with 274hp, then 286hp and, finally, 300hp. The 500 was also slightly renewed in 1985, pushing the amount of horses up to 265.

The production car is pretty amazing by itself but, thanks to some special editions, it has gained some serious status. Such special edition is the 24-hour racing prepped 500 SEC AMG, which was the car chosen to represent AMG in races such as the 24 hours of Spa, in which it gave AMG the lead for many kilometres until it was forced to retire halfway through due to mechanical issues. With 460hp, a 5-speed manual and 320 kg less, it would have been a great winner, but AMG didn’t show to have much faith in it, as they didn’t even equip the car with one of their body kits or set of wheels.

Ten years after the beginning of the SEC’s life, the first generation of this model was brought to an end in order to launch a new line of the model. This new generation, the W140, had its world premiere at the Detroit auto show in 1992 and was later presented to the European market in the same year’s Geneva auto show. The W140 SEC was launched with 5 litre and 6 litre power plants. Sadly, the 500 and 600 SEC became the S500 Coupe and S600 Coupe in 1993. In June 1996 the model went under another marketing process to become the Mercedes-Benz CL, as which the SEC now lives in disguise. The SEC has been hinted to come back in 2020 as one of those four-door coupes everybody likes so much now, let’s hope it will pack a 5.0 as it always has.

What do you think, is the new car worthy of having SEC written on the back? Leave a comment and share your opinion. Thank you very much for reading my first article/blog, if there’s any suggestions you’d like to make leave them in the comments and try to be constructive. :)