2016 Mercedes-Benz S500.

About this file

This is the 2016 Mercedes-Benz S500 shelf of the registry: 200 records of one model year, cut from the 1,304 Mercedes-Benz S500 records the archive holds in total. One model year is the unit these cars are actually compared in — the same body, the same engines, the same wear — so reading them together is reading a cohort rather than a marque. Each record is kept exactly as it was filed: the photographs where photographs were taken, the odometer reading, the fuel and displacement, the damage class the listing itself stated, and — on 97 of these cars — a VIN that can be read, decoded and checked against the car's paper trail.

A record with no damage stamp is a record whose listing stated no damage class — not proof of a clean car — and we hold no price data to put beside it. The top of this shelf keeps moving: live 2016 Mercedes-Benz S500 lots surface here while the hammer is still up and move into the permanent record when it falls.