Thank You to the First Owner Who Lost £145,000.
Because that loss is your opportunity.
This is a 2012 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG, spotted in Chelsea. It cost approximately £175,000 new. With a realistic options allowance of 20%, the first owner paid close to £210,000. Today, you can buy one for around £30,000. A loss of £145,000. That is a brutal number. It is also, at this precise moment in 2026, the reason this car is becoming interesting again.
What the S65 AMG Actually Is
The Mercedes S65 AMG is not an S-Class with a larger engine. It is a completely different machine in the skin of the world's finest luxury saloon.
The M275/M279 twin-turbocharged 6.0-litre V12, hand-built at AMG's facility in Affalterbach, with every engine signed by the technician who assembled it. It produces 621 horsepower and 1,000Nm of torque. That torque figure: 1,000Nm. In a car that also has lambswool carpets, a heated and ventilated massage seat, and a Burmester sound system. The contradictions are the point. The S65 is a limousine that can reach 186mph. A car that will carry four people in silence across a continent and then, at the driver's invitation, deliver supercar acceleration with no drama and no fuss.
The specific 2012 car spotted in Chelsea is the W221 generation the penultimate S65 before the updated W222 arrived. The M275 engine in this car produced 620 horsepower and was, at the time, so torque-rich that AMG was forced to detune it, the transmission simply could not handle the engine's full output. A 5G-Tronic gearbox rated for 738 lb-ft was the limiting factor on a V12 capable of 885 lb-ft. The final production version was capped to protect the gearbox. That mechanical excess, the sense that the car is barely trying, is part of what makes driving an S65 an experience unlike anything a modern turbocharged V8 sedan can replicate.
Why the Mercedes V12 Is Dead, Permanently
In 2019, Mercedes-AMG built the S65 Final Edition. Exactly 130 cars. Finished in obsidian black with bronze detailing. AMG's chief executive Tobias Moers confirmed, without ambiguity, that the twin-turbocharged 6.0-litre V12 was being discontinued. Not paused. Not transferred to another model. Ended.
The reason was regulatory. CO₂ emissions of 325g/km, the figure produced by the S65's V12, are not commercially viable under any European regulatory framework that exists or is planned. The engine that powered the S65, the SL65, the CL65, the G65 AMG and the Maybach S600 across a twenty-year production run simply cannot be made legal in any new car. The physics of combustion and the requirements of emissions legislation are irreconcilable at this displacement and output level.
Mercedes-AMG dropped its 6.0-litre V12s following the 2019 model year, marking the end of an era that had begun with AMG's first V12 in 2002. The S65 and G65 of 2019 were the last rear-wheel-drive AMG cars ever to carry a V12. That is a permanent statement. There is no new S65 coming. There is no successor model with a V12 option. The engine programme is closed.
Why the W221 Has Hit Its Floor
The 2012 S65 AMG represents a specific moment in the W221 S65's market trajectory: the depreciation floor.
All cars have a floor. The floor is the price at which the asset becomes so cheap, relative to what it delivers, that a new category of buyer enters the market, not the luxury car buyer who wanted an S-Class, but the collector and enthusiast who recognises the car's engineering significance at a price the original buyer would have considered impossible. That moment is where the trajectory changes from falling to flat, and eventually to rising.
The W221 S65 has reached that point. UK examples trade from approximately £20,000 to £35,000 for the 2007–2013 generation, with the best low-mileage, well-documented cars commanding more. The lowest recorded US sale was $12,565 in December 2025, a high-mileage project car. The clean low-mileage examples sit in the $25,000 to $40,000 range. These are the prices of a car that has absorbed its entire depreciation curve. The first owner's £145,000 loss has already happened. It is built into the £30,000 asking price.
The Investment Logic
The first owner lost £145,000 so that the second owner could buy one of the greatest luxury performance saloons ever made, with a hand-built twin-turbocharged V12 that no manufacturer will ever produce again, for £30,000. The V12 is permanently dead.
The only direction from here, for the best examples, bought correctly, is up.
Find out more about investment cars. I've spent a significant amount of time putting together a non-generic list of the 100 best investment cars to buy in 2026 under-appreciated, last of their kind, and where the market of buyers is growing.
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