Best Of

$150,000 in today$

I saw this in a group and thought it was interesting - window sticker from a 79 450SEL:



Locally, that money would have bought a modest but decently livable house at the time. A decade later, the equivalent car would cost roughly double, due to inflation and depreciating dollar issues.

The car survives today, in a very pretty color and the car looks pristine, park bench bumper might need re-alignment, not an uncommon quirk:

I remember tires were fun on my E55 AMG with staggered wheels. I only ran PS2s on it - from all accounts if you get to 20K miles and have more than racing slicks you're doing well.

On the C43 the staggered ContiSportContact 5 SSRs last around 14k miles on the front and 23k miles on the rear.

The Sonata looks nice and priced competitively. No rear seat ac vents is a minus. I wonder if they have improved the Theta engine so it doesn’t self destruct as it gets older. From what I understand the 1.6 Turbo they discontinued was no gem either.