Forgive me a little mansplaining here, but I was recently taken to task because “not everyone has had the education you’ve had, Kim” — leveled at me because I was talking about something that I just assumed everyone already knew, but in this particular case, not.
Anyway, the “Q-ship” concept came from the First World War, when, in an effort to combat the U-boat menace, the Royal Navy took ordinary merchant steamers, and added droppable shields to the desks — “droppable” in that when a U-boat would surface to sink the helpless merchant ship (which is what they often did), the prospective victim would lower the shields to reveal a nasty-looking gun which could easily sink said U-boat, and often did.
So put plainly, the Q-ship concept is to disguise power in an apparently-innocuous outer packaging. Like in this case:
Now that’s a 1993 Mercedes E-class car, done in Standard Boring Mercedes Trim & Shape. So why would this one, in particular, be on sale for just under $240,000?
Because it’s no ordinary Merc E-class; it’s an E500, which has under its hood a growling monster 6.0-liter AMG V8, putting out 369hp. (I know, that’s small potatoes compared to today’s behemoth engines, but back in the 90s it rivaled Ferraris.)
As I recall, Mercedes only ever made a couple hundred or so of these beasts, so the scarcity no doubt contributes to the price.
I once knew a guy who loved cars that looked unassuming, but were hidden dragons, simply because they didn’t attract the attention of Los Federales in the same way that his rosso Ferrari Testarossa did.
I have to say that if I were in the market for a powerful car and had a spare quarter-million to drop on it, I’d want it to look just a leetle more impressive than something that looks like a banker would drive. This Maserati MC20 comes to mind… and they cost a lot less than the E500.
I guess I could have just called it a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and saved myself the tiresome mansplain at the beginning, but that only occurred to me after I’d written the thing.
Besides, I think “Q-ship” fits this E500 better than “wolf”, anyway.