Every online car auction has a few listings that look like a steal until you read the fine print. A clean title, a fancy badge, a price well under retail, and one word that changes everything: stationary. That is how a crashed 2017 Mercedes-AMG C63 S sedan ended up in a Canadian shop. Its new owner was hoping he had not just bought a very expensive paperweight.
The car flipper behind @Cluecars found the C63 S the night before it went up for sale. It had front-end damage, deployed airbags and 117,000 kilometers, and the listing said it did not run or drive. He says cars like it sell for about $28,000 to $32,000 at retail, and about $25,000 once you account for the accident history. (All prices here are converted to US dollars at the Nov. 6, 2026 exchange rate and rounded.)
Betting On The C63 S At Auction
He had gambled on a non-running car before and says it went both ways. One had a blown engine. Another, a BMW M5, only needed a pyro fuse, the small explosive charge in the battery cable that cuts power in a hard crash. He checked that the C63 S uses the same kind of system, which made him think the engine might simply have been switched off by the crash.
The bidding moved faster than he hoped. It climbed from about $9,000 past $12,700 with one other bidder pushing back, and ended on an ‘if bid,’ meaning the seller still had to accept the price. The seller did.
He won it for about $13,500.
Only then did the real risk sink in. He looked up the cost of a replacement engine. It was about $13,000, close to what he had just paid for the whole car.
“the retail price of the engine on it alone is worth more than I paid for the whole entire car.”
No Power, No Neutral And Very Little Oil
Back at the shop, the C63 S was completely dead. With a booster connected, a scanner showed 50 fault codes and then 80. Clearing them did not help, and no trick they tried would put the transmission into neutral, so the car could not simply be rolled off the trailer.
The auction had mentioned an oil leak, and parts were hanging under the car. He added a little oil to see where it went and found a puddle forming underneath. He decided not to try starting it.
“So, there’s no oil in this thing.”
So the crew got creative. They backed the trailer into the shop bay, lifted the rear of the car on the hoist by its subframe until the rear wheels were in the air, and drove the trailer out from under it. Wheel dollies did the rest, and the car finally sat on the lift. Underneath, they found a bent tie rod that explained why one front wheel pointed the wrong way. They also spotted a deep gash in one rim, a carbon fiber undertray and what look like aftermarket downpipes.
The Moment The V8 Fired
With a temporary fix holding a damaged oil cooler in place, they drained what little oil was left and refilled it with fresh oil. Then they bypassed the pyro fuse by jumping power from the front, added a second booster and a truck for extra current, and tried again. At first there was only a single crank. After one more round of clearing codes, the twin-turbo V8 started and kept running.
He says the engine makes 503 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque, and that each AMG engine of this kind carries a plate with the name of the person who built it.
Now, he says, they know the AMG actually runs and the roughly $14,000 they spent was not wasted.
What To Know Before Bidding On A Non-Running C63 S Or Any Crashed Car
- Price the worst case first. Look up the cost of an engine and transmission before you bid, not after.
- Read every line of the listing. Words like stationary, oil leak and airbags deployed each carry a cost.
- Do not start an engine you cannot confirm has oil in it. A few minutes of patience can save the motor.
- Plan how you will move a car that will not roll. Some modern cars will not go into neutral without power.
- Leave room in the budget for suspension parts. Front-end hits often bend more than the bumper.
Where Things Stand
The C63 S runs, but it does not drive yet. The next step, he says, is sourcing the parts it needs, putting the front end back together and taking it on the road for the first time before he decides whether the flip pays off.
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