Wrote about this low mileage climate friendly (?) S-Class unicorn back in September when it was in Massachusetts. Two months later it’s again on the market here in Albany for the same low price. Same low mileage. Again, this was the cheapest S-Class back in 2010 at $94k. Still seems to be a bargain commuter car. But if a hybrid isn’t your style, CarMax had a whopping six S63 AMG cars on the net last night, two of which were close to my $35,000 unicorn cap. Both are two owner cars; the 2011 is listed here in Palm Desert, California, and the 2012 is here in Schaumberg, Illinois (Mick?!). The 2012 is a few thousand cheaper, but it is a one accident car. Goes without saying all of these are MaxCare mandatory! Enjoy.
The 755 hp 2019 ZR1unicorn is the fastest Corvette to date (the C8 variants out in the spring will likely equal or exceed the 2019 ZR1) with a top speed of 212 mph and a 0-60 run in 2.8 seconds. Supercar fast. The Corvette team chief called this Corvette “the most we know how to do” according to this Car and Driver review. Corvette folks know tons more than me about ZR1’s. I love watching Corvette’s whoop far more exotic and expensive cars at Le Mans and Daytona but have given up on owning one – at 6’4″ I just don’t fit behind the wheel.
I’m thinking the gas mileage is N/A because it doesn’t get any?
I’d have to be to pay this much!
The 2019 Corvette XR1 sold new for over $120,000. Not much depreciation here? This is the most expensive car I’ve seen at CarMax in the three plus years of tracking unicorns.
As an aside, the most expensive CarMax car I’ve seen before this ZR1 was an almost new 2017 Mercedes AMG GT with only 2,000 miles on it. Listed for $114,998 and over a couple of weeks dropped regularly in price and may have finally sold for $104,998. Here’s the link to that saga. We shall see how long this Corvette stays on the market.
The most likely view I’ll ever have of this car – as a passenger.
This single-owner, low mileage (5,000) hot rod is still under Chevrolet’s warranty for another 31,000 miles and 24 months or so. I would still spring for MaxCare – a car like this needs to be driven hard and fast. That’s what it was engineered for. No need to tell CarMax about your track days when you blow it up. On the other hand if you can afford a $120,000 car maybe you can afford the repairs. Find this ZR1 here in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
This is one handsome, mid-sized Mercedes Benz unicorn, luxuriously equipped (hence the model “E550 Luxury”), at a ridiculously low price. Adaptive cruise control? Check. All wheel drive? Yup. Adjustable suspension? Absolutely. Blind-spot, lane departure, rear view camera, Bluetooth, Harman Kardon sound, panoramic sunroof, air-conditioned and heated seats….it goes on and on. Check out this little graphic included in the CarMax ad!
The 2011 Mercedes E550 packs a 5.5 liter V-8 rated at 382 horsepower. Mated to a seven-speed automatic the sedan is good for a 0-60 mph run in a hair over five seconds. Here’s a lengthy NewCarTestDrive.com review of all the 2011 E-class lineup, including details on the E550. Looks like from their notes this car sold for over $60,000 new nine years ago, and driven only 4,000 miles annually seems to be a damned good deal. Of course there are cheaper, comparable E550’s out there but none that are eligible for MaxCare protection against out of pocket repairs. You want MaxCare. There will be repairs.
The features on this car remind me a great deal of the S-class cars I’ve owned. I’ve been corresponding privately with some readers pondering the German unicorn market and enjoying depreciated, luxury rides protected by MaxCare. I would very much recommend this car as a safe entry into the market. Find this well-appointed, single-owner 2011 Mercedes E550 here in Frederick, Maryland.
If you guessed 662 horsepower you’d be right! The 2014 Mustang Shelby GT500 with a supercharged 5.8 liter V-8 tops the General Motors’ 6.2 liter motors in the Corvette Z06’s, the Camaro ZL1’s, and the Cadillac CTS-V by 12 horsepower. And while I search everyday, CarMax has yet to carry a 700+ horsepower Hellcat from Dodge. Even the sixth generation Mustang Shelby GT350’s available at CarMax only ponied up 526 horsepower. So this is as good as it gets for car peeps who want a unicorn with straight line wheel spin bragging rights!
Ford produced 5,730 Shelby GT500’s in 2014, 4,816 as coupes and the rest as convertibles. Haggerty lists them as collectibles. Maybe so – they sold new in the mid-$50,000 range and CarMax is offering this one for $50,998 – not sure I’ve ever seen that little depreciation in a six year old car.
This Car and Driver review of the 2013 car (largely unchanged for 2014) notes a 3.5 second 0-60 mph run, and surprising to me, a 1.0g on the lateral skidpad. I was under the impression live axle Mustangs handled horribly until the 2015 models went independent. But what do I know?
Find this old-school, low mileage hot rod here in Charlotte, North Carolina. You may want to spring for MaxCare, then head to the drag strip quick-fast!
I love my 2010 Mercedes S600 unicorn, purchased in February 2019 and chronicled here. Last week I returned from a 6,700 mile road trip in the S600, driving over 100 hours from Virginia to Oregon and back. Had some 10-12 hour days behind the wheel and out west some high-speed cruising (admitting NOTHING here!) and could not have been more comfortable. But a nearly identical 2010 Mercedes S65 AMG surfaced at CarMax this week and I have it on hold. I am paralyzed by this choice and welcome comments.
My 2010 S600 has a 5.5l twin-turbo V-12 offering 510hp and 612 lb-ft of torque. The 2010 S65 AMG pumps out 604hp and 738 lb-ft of torque from a hand-built 6.0l twin turbo V-12. Always wanted a 600hp car. I can vouch for the silky smooth acceleration and ride of the S600, and I’ve read the S65 is more aggressive and snarly. Performance-wise the reviews suggest they are almost the same despite the horsepower difference. The S65, like me, carries some extra weight. Price-wise, the S65 cost about $50,000 more than the S600, meaning someone shelled out a good $200,000+ ten years ago for this S65. I do get a little giddy driving cars I can’t afford new.
The 2010 S65 is selling for $35,998, a little more than what I paid for my S600 about 20 months ago. It’s a one-owner, one-accident Florida car. My S600 is (counting me) a two-owner Pennsylvania-Virginia car and is (knock on wood) accident free. The kicker is the S65 has only 35,000 miles on it and I just turned over 70,000 in the S600. Buying the S65 would be resetting the clock for me, giving me another five years of MaxCare and perhaps 90,000 warranty miles. My S600 has another 40 months/55,000 miles of transferable warranty. And I just did the $2,500 Service B before going on the coast to coast trip. What to so?! Of course, would offer the S600 for sale here first, with the same terms I sold my S55 AMG – car guys don’t screw car guys. Will tell you everything I know about the S600. As of this writing I’m working on transferring the S65 from Florida to Virginia. Will decide when it gets here. Until then feel free to chime in with wisdom.
Let’s not pretend this 2011 Buick Lucerne Super unicorn is an enthusiast’s car. Yes it’s extinct, with 2011 being the last year (the car suffered the humiliation of having it’s successor come out a year earlier), and it has the “venerable” 4.6l V-8 Northstar pumping out only 292hp to the front wheels. But the Super has the Magnetic Ride Control, an adaptive damping system that helps this 4,000 lb car wallow less , Bluetooth, seat heaters, heated steering wheel, and lots of room in the front, rear, and trunk. And it has the only-in-a-Buick telltale ventiports in the front fenders, four on each side for a V-8. These go back over 70 years – read here for a fascinating history of the ports in Buicks (long before stick-on ports were sold at K-Mart and added to Civics).
Does it look like someone took a crap in the passenger seat?
And to go way back on the nostalgia trail, this Buick has the rare (?) landau roof – the fake convertible vinyl that takes us back to the 1920’s and 1930’s when automobiles hoped to replicate the style of horse and carriage coach builders. While you probably think I have a deep knowledge of these automotive topics, I stole this vinyl top background too from an eBay Motors blog. Odd it has a sunroof in the fake convertible roof. No shame.
You won’t see yourself coming and going on the road in a Buick Lucerne Super – as best I can tell from the Buick forums, there were 20,000 Lucernes sold in 2011, the final year, and less than 10 percent were V-8 Supers. And I can’t imagine too many had the landau roof. Maybe this car appeals to me conceptually as a lazy, comfortable highway cruiser since I’m writing from a hotel room in Chicago, near the end of a 7,000 mile road trip in my S600 – the subject of an upcoming piece. There’s something about a living room on wheels.
For the record, I’m certainly not bad mouthing Buicks (my wife owns and Encore!), and I learned long ago that there is an ardent enthusiast group out there for every single vehicle and SOMEONE wants this car. If that someone is you, this single owner, accident free 2011 Buick Lucerne Super is here in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. And to think you can add MaxCare and protect the car for five more years, and probably another 25-50,000 miles!
This 2013 Jaguar XF Supercharged unicorn is a really nice all around sleeper. Nice sheet metal, nice wheels, burgundy (not red) paint, and the sleek silver and black interior with the pop up shift knob all suggest an okay sedan from the UK. But under the hood is a pretty powerful 470hp, supercharged 5.0l V-8, and supported by an eight-speed transmission and a 4,100lb weight the car moves to 60mph in about five seconds. Not bad.
The car also has blind spot monitoring, heated steering wheel, air conditioned and heated seats, and a rear view camera. Not at all stripped. There are about a half-dozen comparable supercharged XF’s on Autotrader confirming this isn’t a bad price for one, but this is the only one out there eligible for the MaxCare bumper-to-bumper warranty – a must. The cheapest XF Supercharged I’ve seen with CarMax is a 2009 for $14,998, and the only other one I covered was this 2015 model for $28,998. This 2013 model nicely threads the needle in price, age, and mileage. Find this one-owner, accident free Jaguar here in Tucson, Arizona.
I used to commute to work on Rt 267 in Virginia, a toll road between Dulles Airport and I-495, the Capital Beltway around Washington DC. The toll road often backs up, but the high-speed, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes include exemptions for clean energy/hybrids. Always got a kick out of 20 mpg SUV hybrids in those lanes, saving the planet. Now you can too with this flagship Mercedes S400 Hybrid unicorn. Looks the same inside and out as my V-12 S600 (with the exception of no night vision).
The hybrid S400 has a 3.5l V-6 good for 295hp – not a lot and the car isn’t fast, and yet it’s as comfortable and smooth as any other S-Class. This Car and Driver review back in 2010 noted the car was only good for a seven second 0-60mph run. This was the “cheapest” S-Class back in the day at $94,500, and is a real bargain at $19,998. Find it here in Norwood, Massachusetts.
Unlike my last couple of posts, about the Kiplingers promo and Labor Day work truck, this one is about a no kidding unicorn. A 2009 Mercedes SL63 AMG selling for only $31,998, and with only 47,000 miles. And of course, an 11 year old European sports car you can protect with MaxCare until it’s a sixteen year old luxury hot rod. The car sold new for over $140,000. That gets you a hand-built 6.3L naturally aspirated V-8 good for 518 hp and a 4.4 second 0-60 mph run. Gets you the facelifted 2009 model that’s pretty darned gorgeous. Gets you a hard top convertible AND a sunroof, and the Mercedes Air Scarf neck warmers for top down driving as fall approaches. Bluetooth, seat heaters, power lift gate, and a Harman Kardon audio system.
The Car and Driver review from 2009 was pretty favorable despite the car’s 4,400 lb bulk. What’s even more fascinating to me is while I’m pleased to see CarMax inventories increasing – up to 54,000 cars today from a springtime pandemic low in the 20,000 range, giving us more unicorns overall, I’m saddened that CarMax is enforcing their model year limits and the older unicorns are truly going extinct. Generally CarMax offers European cars up to 10 years old, and all others up to 12 years old. With 2021’s coming off the line already, there are ZERO 2008 cars for sale by CarMax – even the 2008 Chevrolet HHR SS I covered two weeks ago here is gone.
Tonight there are still 190 vehicles available from 2009, and this Mercedes SL63 is the ONLY European car for sale. Because the car showed up tonight already saved in my profile, it means I’ve seen it before. I suspect it has been on the move being held or transferred and could very well be the last 2009 Eurocar we’ll see? (Just for fun, check out this 2009 Mercedes SL65 AMG CarMax offered just last summer! It was once a $188,000 V-12 beast. But I digress.) Find this 2009 Mercedes SL63 AMG, an accident-free unicorn here, in Gaithersburg, Maryland….only 15 miles from my home. I hope it sells quick.
In November 2018 I wrote about a 2008 Chevrolet HHR SS and was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the readers here bought it. At the time I wrote that I didn’t know these HHR SS’ were a thing, and was impressed by the pretty good 2008 car magazine reviews of this sporty little wagon. Check these out; Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Road and Track, and even Popular Mechanics.
The HHR SS was only made for two years, and with a 2.0l 260 hp turbocharged four and “race-tuned” suspension, it was more than just an appearance package. Not a rocket, but more oomph than a regular HHR and a bit of a unicorn. The last one I wrote about sold for just under $14,000 with lower miles, and at $9,899 and 66,000 miles this one looks like a bargain. The Chevrolet HHR SS sold new for about $24,000. Of course, buy some MaxCare that will protect you until this car is an incredible 17 years old! This 2008 Chevrolet HHR SS is here, near me in Charlottesville, Virginia. Tempting. Also, at the bottom of this page is a link to another HHR SS in the CarMax “Coming Soon” section of their website. Not as good of a deal though. Also in the for what it’s worth category, there are only 18 of these on Autotrader nationwide, all very high mileage except for one in Hampton, Virginia with similar miles for $2,000 less – but not MaxCare eligible.  There is one for twice the price with an astonishing 6,500 miles. Oddly, it’s in Eldersburg, Maryland – putting all three cars within my reach. An omen?
In November 2018 I wrote about 
This 2008 Chevrolet HHR SS is 