While walking down 14th Street NW last night, I happened across this curious automobile. Parked on the corner of 14th and Rhode Island Avenue was this bright blue, late-model Mercedes-Benz E350. Now, ordinarily seeing a Mercedes coupe parked near Logan Circle would be no big deal—it’s a fairly tony neighborhood, after all.

But just look at that license plate: “OCCUPY” on customized District of Columbia tags. Does Occupy D.C. have at least one outright admirer among the city’s top earners? That coupe has a suggested base price of $49,800, but some customization on Mercedes’ website reveals that paint job—”Quartz Blue Metallic”—set the owner back another $720, and who knows what upgrades were made to the interior. Mercedes offers a $6,450 “premium package” on the E350 that includes high-end audio, a 10-gigabyte hard drive for music storage, ultra-bright headlamps and other neato stuff. A fabulous ride indeed, but hardly the motorcoach of the 99 percent.

Oh, and for an ideological movement that claims to be so obsessed with preserving and creating more American jobs, a Mercedes-Benz is not the car of choice. Oh, sure, the M-Class sport utility vehicles may be assembled in Tuscaloosa, Ala., but those E-Class coupes are assembled in Sindelfingen, Germany. Where’s the American reinvestment in that?

Anyway, perhaps the sentiment of the license plate is sincere. If you’re the owner of this sweet-looking ride, we’d love to talk to you more about why you got the vanity plates. Please, email me at ben (at) dcist (dot) com.