thailegend

MB dropping free maintenance in 2005 models.










autospies:


http://www.autospies.com./article/in...&categoryId=11

Captain Bone

And any reason to buy a Mercedes will soon follow with a "why oh why"

-Anthony

mmarshall

rominl

iTrader: (4)

haha it's either

1) they are confident that their stuff only needs minimum maintenance from now on, or
2) they are tired of the money they have to spend on free maintenance

Gojirra99

It's only a US thing anyway. Mercedes Benz Canada has never offered free maintainence. Lexus Canada on the other hand offers the first 2 (2000 & 8000 km) scheduled maintainence free.

brian3268

Abcedefghij

Lexkost

Hey roninl , I think #1 is wrong and #2 is the correct answer .

ATSOU

MB = Most Breakdowns

rominl

iTrader: (4)

which is what i think too

GlobeCLK

iTrader: (5)

love your sig man. DPP rules.

LexFather

Mercedes has promised they will be back on top of quality. I don't ever remember them being #1 though. That will take TONS of money, since their product line is so vast.

mmarshall

Mercedes in fact was the quality standard of the industry for decades....up until about 10 years ago. All through the 1980's, in spite of Toyota and Honda's growing reputation, Mercedes built what were considered the most durable cars available. Even then, though, like now, they still needed a lot of expensive maintenence, if not repairs. But in the early -to-mid 1990's a gradual quality drop started to develop that started to accelerate after 1996. The ML-class accelerated the drop even more, as did today's C-Class and SLK. A number of reasons have been given for this quality drop over the years...too many to go into in detail in just one post here. Perhaps this could be the subject for a new general discussion thread.

Gojirra99

That may be easier said than done with the complicated electronics especially in the higher end cars these days. If the Germans are any good at it at all, they would have been the dominant force in the world of electronic products like the Japanese already.
If it's material quality that you're talking about, anyone can put top notch materials in their cars just that they 'll have to increase their prices even more than they're now.

Technics

I hope they do focus on quality from now on, why should you pay 100k for a car that frequents the dealer for repairs?

mmarshall

No.....quality does not HAVE to be expensive. Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Mazda, Nissan, and others all make good, durable cars for less than 20K...and even 10-15 K in some instances. And consider Hyundai....the all-time maker of junk and the butt of jokes for so many years. They have improved enormously in the past 5-7 years. Today's Hyundai products, while still not quite the equal of Toyota or Honda in durability, have high-quality materials and good fit-and-finish......and have not jacked their prices up much either.
Mercedes' problems stem from several sources.....partly arrogant leadership, partly high-priced labor, partly the policies of the German government, partly from pressure from Japanese competition, but mainly just from trying to cheapen the hardware in their cars and using too many untested and unreliable electronic safety nannies.