Season 5: Episode 4
YOU WON’T GUESS WHERE WE FOUND THIS 1 OF 14 SBARRO 500SEC MERCEDES GULLWING!!
Just sold!
A Special episode indeed as we show you one the latest to come through The Barn Miami’s doors! An extremely rare 1 of 14 Mercedes Benz 500sec by Coach builder Sbarro. A Gullwing coupe that embodies everything 80’s.
The history behind this car is pretty fascinating too. We heard of its existence through a friend and once we saw the first pictures, we just had to have it! It wasn’t that easy however, the car was down in South America – Colombia (makes total sense, we know!). In fact, we started to dig through the paperwork and learned it was imported new from Europe to Colombia to the original owner…that was big $$$ back then. The current owner inherited the car. 1 family-owned car! We were mind blown. After closer inspection, we further learned it is still sitting on the original tires! It was about a 2-month process, but we were able to get the car out of Colombia and import it into the US. It now has a Florida clean title and ready to go anywhere.
The written description below provided by 1000sel.com:
The Mercedes 380-500SEC Gullwings made by Styling-Garage (SGS) from Hamburg are absolute legends when it comes to the 1980s styling and coachbuilding. And although the versions made in Hamburg are the best known, they’re not the only company that made them. About two years after Styling-Garage unveiled their 500SGS Gullwing, Swiss car creator Franco Sbarro displayed a very similar car at the 1983 Geneva car salon. The car was named Sbarro Mercedes 500 Portes Papillon “Gullwing”. Quite a mouthful. At first glance, the car looks quite similar to the 500SGS Gullwing by Styling-Garage, but in detail, there are huge differences. The biggest difference is the amount of plastic involved: the Sbarro Portes Papillon has doors made from plastic, which are shorter than the regular doors of a Mercedes SEC, with the bottom part now integrated in the doorstep. This makes entering the Sbarro Gullwing much harder.
A big difference over the Gullwing-doored 500SECs built by SGS was that Sbarro also offered performance upgrades: the regular 5.0 litre engine from the Mercedes 500SEC could be swapped for the 6.9 litre V8 engine from the W116 450SEL 6.9. As with the cars made by Styling-Garage, the majority of the Sbarro Gullwings went to the Middle-East. Who other than Arab Sheiks and Royals could pay a pricetag of 180.000 Swiss Francs / 200.000 DM?
Fun Fact: the first Sbarro 500SEC Gullwing had the name “Shahin 1000” written on the back. The name had a stripe running right through it which had some press puzzled so they came up with names like “Shahia 1000”, “Shahina 1000” and “Shanin 1000”. The Arab word “Shahin” stands for “peregrine falcon”, which is commonly used in hunting.