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Look out your window. Look at your car. Chances are the car you are looking at has a 2-liter 4-cylinder engine. Now that’s all fine and dandy, except that it isn’t. You see, there is actually a lot wrong with an inline-4. There are no overlapping power strokes, and it suffers from that tricky secondary imbalance.

The V12 is one of the very few engine configurations that is perfectly balanced

Not so with V12 engines. There are many, many overlapping power strokes and the V12 is one of the very few engine configurations that is perfectly balanced. Hence, I have justified my need for a V12 powered car.

The only problem is that many V12 powered cars are very expensive: Paganis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins. Now, I’m not trying to appear overly humble, but I can’t afford any of those.

But thankfully Mercedes-Benz makes cars that don’t hold their value. That means that I can have for less than $10k what someone once payed close to $200k for. I don’t think I should have to do any more convincing. Here is auto-journalist Harry Metcalfe describing why he picked up a Mercedes SL600 R129 V12 on the cheap.

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Look out your window. Look at your car. Chances are the car you are looking at has a 2-liter 4-cylinder engine. Now that’s all fine and dandy, except that it isn’t. You see, there is actually a lot wrong with an inline-4. There are no overlapping power strokes, and it suffers from that tricky secondary imbalance.

The V12 is one of the very few engine configurations that is perfectly balanced

Not so with V12 engines. There are many, many overlapping power strokes and the V12 is one of the very few engine configurations that is perfectly balanced. Hence, I have justified my need for a V12 powered car.

The only problem is that many V12 powered cars are very expensive: Paganis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins. Now, I’m not trying to appear overly humble, but I can’t afford any of those.

But thankfully Mercedes-Benz makes cars that don’t hold their value. That means that I can have for less than $10k what someone once payed close to $200k for. I don’t think I should have to do any more convincing. Here is auto-journalist Harry Metcalfe describing why he picked up a Mercedes SL600 R129 V12 on the cheap.

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