Though I've worked on a ton of stuff, the above is where there's A) enough people owning the above who still think all vehicles explode when their odometer hits 100K B) have inexpensive and easy repairs for simple things that are rotting or are wearing out and C) plenty of people who know better and when they test drive a 10-year old one that feels as good and looks as good as new, won't even negotiate your asking price.
I've entertained the idea of selling BMW M cars, Audi S/RS and Merc AMGs, but the reality is there's far more labor involved, far more to usually fix, higher acquisition costs, less demand, and buyers who are completely insufferable. I've sold several, but in retrospect it wasn't ever worth the time and effort.
If you want to get into performance, I'd go gentle: Ford have sports lines of their usual mix (ST/RS in Europe), as do many other makes.
Also a small hatchback with a big engine is a lot more fun per dollar than a Merc...
That's interesting, when I used to have a shop and flip cars on the side, honda civics and euro cars were the most profitable. Civics because you can fix them up, lower them and throw on a set of wheels and you're good to go are super easy to turn over. Euro cars are easy to pick up at steep discounts when they're older and need repairs, and the parts are actually not bad and once you get the hang of it, they're not too bad to work on.
Of course you'd want to also have accounts with parts stores otherwise you're losing too much on those costs.
However this was 5 years ago so the small crossover suv craze wasn't what it is today.
https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe...
That certainly matches what I've seen happen with my friend's cars: Toyotas just keep going and are cheap to fix, Euro cars have something bust earlier in their lifetime and usually outrageously costly to repair.
I am from NZ and as a country we keep driving second hand cars until they are uneconomic to fix, and maybe half of the cars imported from overseas are second hand Japanese cars. We don't have a lot of American cars but my own limited experience with them is that they are as unreliable and costly as the European cars.
You can find some individual models within other brands that are reliable, however if you are buying a car that is 5 to 10 years old, you can't yet know if the model you are getting is a good one, so buying by brand actually makes sense. Quote from article about maintenance costs: "Toyota completely avoids the the most expensive models list" which helps averages (although I think they used median costs in that article).
You also get a very different kind of buyer (skews faaaar younger) that honestly, is just insufferable to deal with. There’s more profit per unit, but not more profit an hour, and too much dealing with awful personalities.