Cars&Bids has just sold a Mad Max-inspired Frankenstein monster of a car for a token sum of $4,999. Its creator, Greg Rogers, put a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 300E (W124) body on top of a ML430 (W163) chassis and slapped on some fake guns for the look of it.
Rogers has spent 37 years running his own car business and cooperating with Mercedes-Benz. By the time he retired he had a crashed off-roader gathering dust in the garage and a nicely preserved, but engine-dead sedan. He noticed that the two had very similar wheelbase lengths and reckoned he could pull off a merger.
For maximum wow effect, he drew inspiration from The Rat Patrol series dating back to the 1960s. It was a TV show dedicated to a commando squad from the USA fighting in North Africa during the WWII. He called the car ‘ME43’ and outfitted it with an imitated MG42 minigun he fashioned out of the ML’s steering column. He scavenged a number of other junk parts for fake ammo.
The interior has largely been carried over from the 300E, but the dashboard came from the ML instead. An air compressor in the trunk can be used to blare a steam horn on the roof.
A stock 4.3-liter V8 rated at 268 PS (264 hp / 197 kW) sends the torque to all four wheels through a five-speed automatic gearbox. With 435,000 kilometers (270,000 miles) under its belt, it’s no surprise it went for just five grand.
