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    "headline": "Porsche assembled 10,479 Mercedes 500 E sedans in Germany as its own export revenue slumped",
    "description": "Each car took 18 days and traveled twice from Zuffenhausen to Sindelfingen, because the flared fenders were too wide for the Mercedes line. Porsche's engineers say the work kept the team together.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-08T14:25:00+00:00",
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    "keywords": "500 E, classic cars, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche",
    "articleBody": "Every Mercedes 500 E had to shuttle from Zuffenhausen to Sindelfingen twice before anyone could buy it. Porsche put the bill of work at 18 days per car, and it took the job when its own export revenue was falling and almost every key figure in the business had turned negative. That odd arrangement ran from 1990 until April 1995 and produced 10,479 cars. The men who built the first ones went back to the sites in 2021 for the Porsche Museum, and their account reads less like a car launch than a survival plan. “The order was very important for us in order to ensure good capacity utilisation in Zuffenhausen and Weissach,” recalled Michael Hölscher, the project manager on the development side. He was blunter about the wider lesson: “We were able to keep the team together with orders like these.” Why Mercedes had to ask a rival Daimler-Benz handed Porsche the development contract in 1988, according to Porsche. The brief was to take the ordinary W124 sedan and fit the five-liter, four-valve V8 from the 500 SL roadster. Porsche called it Project 2758 and says it carried about 90 percent of the development load. The trouble was width. The finished car measured 56 millimeters (2.2 inches) wider than a standard W124 and sat 23 millimeters lower, and those flared fenders would not pass through the Sindelfingen line. Porsche says rebuilding that equipment was not worth the money for Mercedes. A published history of the model adds that the Mercedes engineers were tied up with the W140 S-Class at the time. So a sedan with a three-pointed star on its hood took shape inside a sports car maker’s buildings. Porsche had a spare one: the old Reutter building in Werk 2 at Zuffenhausen stood empty. A factory route that made no sense on paper The sequence explains the 18 days: Mercedes supplied body parts from Sindelfingen to Zuffenhausen. Porsche built up the shell in the Reutter building, adding parts it made itself, including those front fenders. The bodies went back to Sindelfingen for paint. Painted shells returned to Zuffenhausen, where the Rössle building handled final assembly and the engine. Run the multiplication on Porsche’s own figures. Two runs per car across 10,479 cars means at least 20,958 trips from Zuffenhausen to Sindelfingen, for one model, over about five years. Hölscher called the logistics “a big challenge,” and that looks generous. Output began at ten cars a day and soon doubled to 20. Production tallies published for the model show 4,416 built in 1992, the peak year. At 20 a day, that is about 221 working days of output in a single calendar year. What the money actually bought Buyers got 326 metric horsepower, 480 newton-meters (354 lb-ft) of torque, zero to 100 km/h in 6.1 seconds and a limiter at 250 km/h (155 mph). The transmission was a four-speed automatic. There were only four seats, because the differential took up the room needed for seat suspension in the middle of the rear bench. Michael Mönig, who built the prototype, summed up the look: “It represents pure understatement, and catches the eye only at second glance.” Engineers let the V8 breathe through the gap around the headlights and moved the battery to the trunk to improve the weight split. Porsche’s team converted the first 14 cars by hand at Weissach. From car 15 onward, assembly moved to the prototype building with newly designed body panels. Those demonstration cars helped persuade Mercedes to approve series production, Porsche says. If you are shopping for one now Three details from the record matter to anyone looking at a 500 E today. Mercedes changed the name to E 500 in a mid-1993 facelift, so the badge dates the car. Published specifications for the model list left-hand drive only and larger brakes on the 1994 cars, so the model year changes what stops the car. And only 29 are listed as going to the United Kingdom. Canada took 85. The United States took 1,528, and Japan 1,184. All of those import counts come from one published history of the car, not from Porsche. The company’s own closing figure is simpler: 10,479 cars, finished by April 1995. Further reading Wikipedia: Mercedes-Benz 500 E Image: Tronerud, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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