Don Molina

Hi everyone,

my name is Yannis and I'm a luxo-barge veteran, or at least as much of a veteran as a 28yo guy can be.
My first car was an E38 728i (Greece has insance taxes don't judge on the small engine :P) that I kept for a good 4 years while I was studying in Athens.

After that I went on to a Lexus LS430 that my dad didn't use anymore, so I took it with me after moving to Switzerland. That kept me company for almost 3 years, and just last month I decided to sell it and move to something else.

I'm changing jobs and decided to get something nice for myself. So I've been looking for a C216 CL500 here in Switzerland, but all the cars I had in my shortlist got bought up in the past few weeks and then I started looking into a D3 S8.
And let me tell you, the more I think about it, the more attractive it gets. It seems like a pretty reliable car (especially judging against the CL), it's very good looking and I really think it's going to be more interesting to have a V10 than a "normal" CL.


I do almost all of the work on my cars on my own, unless it's alignments or something that requires very specific equipment. So the fact that the D3 has such an awesome community, similar to the E38 and the Lexus, is another selling point, because I really enjoy working on my cars, and I don't think the CL will be an easy beast to approach.

So to sum up I'm looking at an S8, and while I'm not afraid of big mileages, I was thinking to stay below the 100k mile mark. I would really like keyless, adaptive cruise and a non-solar roof, ventilated seats would be nice and B&O or AMI would not be a decision maker for me, since I could live without B&O and I think I could retrofit an AMI for reasonable money.

I don't really mind if it's pre-08 or not, since I like both looks and I don't think the differences are that big.

I currently have 4 cars shortlisted, with two as top picks:
a dark blue 2008 with ceramics
and
a Phantomschwartz late-06

Ceramics do scare me a bit, and I do like the black/grey combo better than the blue/beige that I also had in my Lexus. Other than that, both have adaptive cruise and ventilated seats, and both have solar roof (I think).
The first one is cheaper, has 2 sets of wheels (summer/winter tires) and is a facelift, but the second one is nicer looking, has carbon trim, and I won't get a stroke when it comes to do a brake job.

I'm planning to keep the car for 2-3 years and maybe do a total of 40k miles in that time, and I'm thinking (hoping?) maybe the ceramic brakes won't be an issue in that timeframe, but if I like the car, I can see myself keeping it.

What would you suggest between the two?
There are also other options (example 1, example 2) at over 100k miles and a lot cheaper, but I guess they might need more $ on consumables/maintenance so it could be a wash. If they don't example 1 above, seems like a good deal, since it has keyless, adaptive cruise, and is black on black, but maybe 120k miles is a lot?


Thanks for any input, and sorry for the looong first post.


PS I'm budgetting about 2-3k /year on consumables and the odd problem. I'm thinking that should cover a carbon cleanup, maybe a manifold, bushings, a couple sets of brake pads, maybe discs if it's time, tires, + fluids. Again, all that in a timeframe of 2-3 years.