Junkyard Find: 2001 Mercedes-Benz ML55 AMG
by Murilee Martin
Since trucks, truck-shaped cars, and generally truck-influenced vehicles dominate American roads in the present day, it’s about time I started paying attention to high-end luxurious German truck-like machines in the vehicle graveyards I frequent. Such machines have been easy to find in such places for quite some time now, due to the notoriously quick depreciation of large-dollar German cars that don’t get the meticulous maintenance they deserve, but prior to today, we’d just seen a single BMW X5 in this series. Let’s go right to an AMG for our first Mercedes-Benz SUV: this 2001 W163 ML55 AMG.
The price tag on this truck, soon after the turn of the century, started at $65,900 (about $101,150 in 2020 dollars). That was better than twice the cost of a loaded Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer.
But Ford wouldn’t sell you an engine like this in your Explorer back then: a 5.4-liter OHC V8 rated at 342 horsepower. This engine made the ’01 ML55 the fastest SUV in the world at that time, and it could run the quarter-mile in the high 14s.
As you might expect, no manual transmission could be had in this truck. Five-speed automatics went in all the ML55s.
You know Full Depreciation has arrived for a vehicle when its owner feels comfortable slapping stickers from cannabis dispensaries on the windshield. Such stickers have become very prevalent in the junkyards of weed-crazed Colorado, and I even find junkyard cars with bags of wacky tabacky still inside.
There’s also a sticker from a firearms silencer manufacturer on the dash, because why not?
Plenty of the AMG interior goodies had been grabbed by junkyard shoppers prior to my arrival, but hints of this M-Class’s once-opulent high-speed luxury remain visible.
Like getting together with four friends and shooting yourselves into a Wile E. Coyote mountainside with a giant slingshot!
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