Buy/Drive/Burn: V12 Luxury Coupes to Drain Your Wallet in 1993

by Corey Lewis

Published: October 4th, 2018

buy drive burn v12 luxury coupes to drain your wallet in 1993

They’re big, expensive, luxurious, and have 12 cylinders sitting under their long hoods. All of them will deplete your checkbook in multiple ways, but you can only take one home with you.

What’s it gonna be?

BMW 850Ci

BMW’s brand new 8 Series stormed onto well-funded driveways for the 1990 model year. The premium coupe offering from the Roundel brand, the 8 Series was without a predecessor. In development since 1981, BMW spent around $1 billion to get the new coupe just right. 8 Series cars were powered by V8 or V12 engines between 4.0- and 5.6-liters in displacement. BMW released the top of the line 850i version first, powered by a 5.0-liter V12 shared with the 7 Series sedan. Featuring drive-by-wire throttle and a six-speed manual, the 850Ci managed 296 horsepower and 330 lb-ft of torque. The 8 Series was a middling sort of expensive, asking $83,400.

Jaguar XJS

Certainly the oldest car here, Jaguar’s XJS launched in its original format in 1975. Revisions arrived for the 1982 model year, followed by a major refresh for the model’s final variant in 1992. Revised front and rear fascias, a modernized interior, and new engine choices brought the XJS into the Nineties. On offer were Jaguar’s new 4.0-liter inline-six and V12 engines of 5.3- or 6.0-liters of displacement, depending on the year. 1993 was the debut of the largest V12, paired to a four-speed automatic for the North American market. This gentleman’s express featured 318 horsepower and 336 lb-ft of torque. At the time, the XJS was the cheapest of our trio by a wide margin at $59,750.

Mercedes-Benz 600 SEC

The brand new W140 series S-Class took the world by storm for the 1992 model year, replacing the frankly epic W126 sedan and coupe. Available from the get-go in North America, what would eventually become known as the S500 and S600 Coupe carried 500 SEC and 600 SEC labels for ’92 and ’93. All engines for the coupe were of eight or 12 cylinders, the former being the 5.0-liter M119 engine, and the latter the 6.0-liter M120. The V12 was always matched to a five-speed automatic transmission, which restrained 389 horsepower and 347 lb-feet of torque. By far the most advanced and expensive car here, the 600 SEC asked a whopping $132,000.

Three price points and 36 total cylinders. Which one is worth buying?

[Images: Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, BMW]

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Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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2 of 65 comments

Lightspeed on Oct 05, 2018

LSX swap into all of them

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Gearhead77 on Oct 08, 2018

I always liked the 8 series and you can get in a manual= buy My folks had a 1995 W140 S320 they bought used around 1998. It was a good car in I-6 form, it would have been better with the V8 or V12. The last MB built to a standard, not a price. Drive the Mercedes, because the BMW would be a better driver. Not a huge fan of the styling of the MB in coupe form though. Burn the Jag. I don't have much love for these cars, but if the right one showed up...

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Recent Comments

FreedMike Not surprisingly, I have some ideas. What Cadillac needs, I think, is a statement. They don’t really have an identity. They’re trying a statement car with the Celestiq, and while that’s the right idea, it has the wrong styling and a really wrong price tag. So, here’s a first step: instead of a sedan, do a huge, fast, capable and ridiculously smooth and quiet electric touring coupe. If you want an example of what I’m thinking of, check out the magnificent Rolls-Royce Spectre. But this Cadillac coupe would be uniquely American, it’d be named “Eldorado,” and it’d be a lot cheaper than the $450,000 Spectre – call it a buck twenty-five, with a range of bespoke options for prospective buyers that would make each one somewhat unique. Make it 220 inches long, on the same platform as the Celestiq, give it retro ‘60s styling (or you could do a ‘50s or ‘70s throwback, I suppose), and at least 700 horsepower, standard. Why electric? It’s the ultimate throwback to ‘60s powertrains: effortlessly fast, smooth, and quiet, but with a ton more horsepower. It’s the perfect drivetrain for a dignified touring coupe. In fact, I’d skip any mention of environmental responsibility in this car’s marketing – sell it on how it drives, period.  How many would they sell? Not many. But the point of the exercise is to do something that will turn heads and show people what this brand can do.  Second step: give the lineup a mix of electric and gas models, and make Cadillac gas engines bespoke to the brand. If they need to use generic GM engine designs, fine – take those engines and massage them thoroughly into something special to Cadillac, with specific tuning and output. No Cadillac should leave the factory with an engine straight out of a Malibu or a four-banger Silverado. Third step: a complete line-wide interior redo. Stop the cheapness that’s all over the current sedans and crossovers. Just stop it. Use the Lyriq as a blueprint – it’s a big improvement over the current crop and a good first step. I’d also say Cadillac has a good blend of screen-controlled and switch-controlled user interfaces; don’t give into the haptic-touch and wall-to-wall screen thing. (On the subject of Caddy interiors – as much as I bag on the Celestiq, check out the interior on that thing. Wow.)Fourth step: Blackwing All The Things – some gas, others electric. And keep the electric/gas mix so buyers have a choice.Fifth step: be patient. That’s not easy, but if they’re doing a brand reset, it’ll take time. 
NJRide So if GM was serious about selling this why no updates for so long? Or make something truly unique instead of something that looked like a downmarket Altima?
Kmars2009 I rented one last fall while visiting Ohio. Not a bad car...but not a great car either. I think it needs a new version. But CUVs are King... unfortunately!
Ajla Remember when Cadillac introduced an entirely new V8 and proceeded to install it in only 800 cars before cancelling everything?
Bouzouki Cadillac (aka GM!!) made so many mistakes over the past 40 years, right up to today, one could make a MBA course of it. Others have alluded to them, there is not enough room for me to recite them in a flowing, cohesive manner.Cadillac today is literally a tarted-up Chevrolet. They are nice cars, and the "aura" of the Cadillac name still works on several (mostly female) consumers who are not car enthusiasts.The CT4 and CT5 offer superlative ride and handling, and even performance--but, it is wrapped in sheet metal that (at least I think) looks awful, with (still) sub-par interiors. They are niche cars. They are the last gasp of the Alpha platform--which I have been told by people close to it, was meant to be a Pontiac "BMW 3-series". The bankruptcy killed Pontiac, but the Alpha had been mostly engineered, so it was "Cadillac-ized" with the new "edgy" CTS styling.Most Cadillacs sold are crossovers. The most profitable "Cadillac" is the Escalade (note that GM never jack up the name on THAT!).The question posed here is rather irrelevant. NO ONE has "a blank check", because GM (any company or corporation) does not have bottomless resources.Better styling, and superlative "performance" (by that, I mean being among the best in noise, harshness, handling, performance, reliablity, quality) would cost a lot of money.Post-bankruptcy GM actually tried. No one here mentioned GM's effort to do just that: the "Omega" platform, aka CT6.The (horribly misnamed) CT6 was actually a credible Mercedes/Lexus competitor. I'm sure it cost GM a fortune to develop (the platform was unique, not shared with any other car. The top-of-the-line ORIGINAL Blackwing V8 was also unique, expensive, and ultimately...very few were sold. All of this is a LOT of money).I used to know the sales numbers, and my sense was the CT6 sold about HALF the units GM projected. More importantly, it sold about half to two thirds the volume of the S-Class (which cost a lot more in 201x)Many of your fixed cost are predicated on volume. One way to improve your business case (if the right people want to get the Green Light) is to inflate your projected volumes. This lowers the unit cost for seats, mufflers, control arms, etc, and makes the vehicle more profitable--on paper.Suppliers tool up to make the number of parts the carmaker projects. However, if the volume is less than expected, the automaker has to make up the difference.So, unfortunately, not only was the CT6 an expensive car to build, but Cadillac's weak "brand equity" limited how much GM could charge (and these were still pricey cars in 2016-18, a "base" car was ).Other than the name, the "Omega" could have marked the starting point for Cadillac to once again be the standard of the world. Other than the awful name (Fleetwood, Elegante, Paramount, even ParAMOUR would be better), and offering the basest car with a FOUR cylinder turbo on the base car (incredibly moronic!), it was very good car and a CREDIBLE Mercedes S-Class/Lexus LS400 alternative. While I cannot know if the novel aluminum body was worth the cost (very expensive and complex to build), the bragging rights were legit--a LARGE car that was lighter, but had good body rigidity. No surprise, the interior was not the best, but the gap with the big boys was as close as GM has done in the luxury sphere.Mary Barra decided that profits today and tomorrow were more important than gambling on profits in 2025 and later. Having sunk a TON of money, and even done a mid-cycle enhancement, complete with the new Blackwing engine (which copied BMW with the twin turbos nestled in the "V"!), in fall 2018 GM announced it was discontinuing the car, and closing the assembly plant it was built in. (And so you know, building different platforms on the same line is very challenging and considerably less efficient in terms of capital and labor costs than the same platform, or better yet, the same model).So now, GM is anticipating that, as the car market "goes electric" (if you can call it that--more like the Federal Government and EU and even China PUSHING electric cars), they can make electric Cadillacs that are "prestige". The Cadillac Celestique is the opening salvo--$340,000. We will see how it works out.