Pray for our chequebooks, we’ve bought a broken Brabus 560SEL

Internationally renowned photographer Mark has been working with TG for many, many years. When not taking photos he’s buying inappropriate cars. Here he shares his addiction with the world…

I am not into gambling. Which is good because I think I’d be really bad at it. I’d be that bloke in the corner convinced the next spin will be their last, only to go £100 in the green before ending up £200 in the red five minutes later.

I know this because it’s the same approach I seem to have with cars. I told myself no more buying after picking up a non-running BMW M635CSi for cheap. It was too good an opportunity to pass by; a quick fix-up and sell. Yet it’s in, at an estimate, 100 bits and undergoing work that’ll cost even more than I paid for it. And I haven’t sold a car in nearly 10 years now.

Then a road-legal Ferrari 360 Challenge race car popped up for sale. Obviously, this too seemed like an unavoidable opportunity. Something that daft isn’t going to be available for long, is it? However, with my Experian report now making the government’s 2020 borrowing look quite mediocre, enough was enough after this one.

If you’ve ever used that phrase you also know that it’s a lie; a whimsical promise which is only as strong as the next interesting car that comes along. And, unfortunately, what came up next was inevitably too good an opportunity to miss.

This is a 1990 Mercedes 560SEL, an absolutely stonking car in standard form, but this particular one took a trip to Brabus in the early Nineties and never looked back. In fact, it’s taken many trips to many places over the years as its odometer currently reads a weighty 462,000km. And that’s despite it being laid up in a barn for the past 14 years.

Obviously, it’s far from being roadworthy. There’s a reason detail shots are limited; the bodywork is an absolute mess. Every panel has some form of rust on it, or at the very least quite a bit of bubbling. The engine doesn’t start, and it’s also been in an accident at some point. Oh, and it was once auctioned off as a seized asset many years ago. Which I think is commonplace for any Nineties tuner-fettled car from Germany.

None of that matters because... look at it. It’s 5.5-metres of blacked-out schnitzel. Long before the term ‘murdered out’ was being coined by YouTubers sticking matte black vinyl on leased cars, Brabus was busy de-blinging the W126 in a bid to create something Darth Vader would drive en route to destroying another planet.

What’s the plan for this one? Getting it running would be a good start, closely followed by much welding to make it solid again before finally tackling the naff bodywork. That makes it sound incredibly simple, and also assumes I won’t get side-tracked along the way, which is even more concerning than the rust. But it’ll absolutely be worth it in the end.

Here’s hoping Top Gear allows this page to continue into 2030 when I’ll finally have everything fixed, working and back together. Just in time for internal combustion engines to be banned.