The time has come to sell my beloved 2010 Mercedes S600 (W221) while there’s plenty of MaxCare extended warranty left for the next owner, and so I can pursue my next unicorn. The short version is this; the car has less than 96,500 miles and the free (to the buyer) transferable MaxCare warranty is good until 125,000 odometer miles, or February 2024, whichever comes first. If you’ve read this blog at all, you know it’s all about driving deeply depreciated cars I can’t afford to repair, but the financial risk is transferred to MaxCare – “driving rich”. The car sold new for over $150,000 and is offered at $25,900 OBO on Autotrader (Link Here) and however many other Mercedes Facebook groups I can find. Shoot me a message if you are interested or have questions. I’m happy to share the service history, MaxCare details, and more photos. The Mercedes data card is at the bottom of this blog as well.
There are W221 S600’s on Autotrader for more and less money, with more and less mileage. Twenty total I think. This is the only one with an extended warranty. When I sold my 2004 Mercedes S55 it was also still covered by MaxCare, and the buyer and I met a local Mercedes dealership. I offered that anything he found that I had not noticed, we’d turn the car in and get it fixed. And we did. He gained confidence the car was solid, and he got to see the MaxCare coverage work. More than willing to do that again with this S600. That’s why the price is a little above Autotrader’s market average.
The full text of what I would have put on Autotrader (had they not limited me to 2,000 characters!) is at the bottom. What I hope to share here are some of the nuances of owning a Mercedes S600. I’ve driven it from Virginia to Oregon and back twice on pandemic runs to see my youngest adult son living in Portland, and during one of these the description of “driving from a comfortable recliner, in your living room, in a bank vault, on a bullet train” came to me. I covered Crawfordsville, Indiana to Cheyenne, Wyoming alone in a single day – 1,050 miles in just under 13 hours including gas and McDonald’s. Felt like a short drive to Grandma’s. If I can figure out how to post my dash cam video you can watch it all! I also took the car on another thousand mile loop through the Virginia countryside in the early days of the pandemic. It was my cocoon. Did an 1,800 mile run to the 24 Hours of Daytona and back last January. Previous owners put 45,000 miles on the car in nine years. I added 50,000 in three. I love driving this car.
I became a CarMax/Maxcare addict after enjoying over $35,000 in “free” (to me) repairs to my 2004 Mercedes S55 AMG – a car I paid $21,000 for plus maybe $3,500 for MaxCare. CarMax never flinched on the repairs. So far I’m over $15,000 in MaxCare repairs for the S600. The most expensive fixes have been the seats – twice. I don’t know the exact amount because a number of repairs in the early days were listed as “No Charge” on the service documents. Later they had the dollar amounts. I paid $7,500 for MaxCare when I bought the car and I’ve clearly gotten my money’s worth.
