toy4two

they may be more reliable but when something does break expect to pay through the nose, my friend's S series had one air suspensio corner go out on his and was told it was a $12,000 repair. He opted to throw on some lowering springs and sell it total cost $400.

NINEZeRO

that wasn't covered under warranty?

toy4two

it was out of warranty.

When I had my Lexus, and they are not perfect cars, but damn close for reliability, when you replace something you know it's going to last, you don't see the repeated trips to the dealership for the exact same issue, and the issues tend to effect all owners. Some makes you continually bring the car in for items (ahem GM) and you are right back there within a year to repalce that part again and again and again.. Not to mention according to owners in forums the problems are so variable, never the same parts failing, truly a sign of bad engineering all the way around vs poor engineering on one part out of many on a Japaneese make.

mmarshall

I don't see how it's apples and oranges. Whether you have a 4-cylinder, $10,000 econobox or a Mercedes AMG that costs ten times that much, an oil change, for the most part, is still the same basic operation...with a warm engine on level ground, unscrewing a drain plug and filter, replacing a washer, screwing on a new proper-spec filter after lubing the O-ring, and refilling with the proper grade and amount of oil. Big deal. It might cost a little more if the oil is synthetic or semi-synthetic, but otherwise it's pretty much the same operation. Luxury car makers tend to charge more for it than less-expensive makes, but they are just making more profit, that's all. For example, you can take a Lexus to a Toyota shop for an oil change and get the EXACT same oil change......and the same oil filter....as a Lexus shop, for half the price.

CDNROCKIES

And which MB do you own that makes your opinion worth any more?
More typical car mag/internet site speculation as per usual.

The reliability for Benz will be nowhere near what the Lexus provides. That statement is coming from the person that it appears has had the most difficulty with his IS F....and it has still been better than our brand new Benz.

In just over 8 weeks of ownership we have had the check engine light come on twice, this most recent occurence leading to the second recall on our '09 ML 320 Bluetec.

Like a previous poster mentioned, there are certain things that MB does much better than Lexus....but reliability isn't one of them. My wife LOVES her ML even more than her previous RX, but these little annoyances are a PITA.

MI350_55

FWIW... A break down of the 1st and last oil change I had done at the dealership:

$10/qt of Mobil1 0W40 (SLK55 takes a little over 8qts) - can be had for $6/qt at WalMart
$40 for an oil filter - can be had thru AmSoil for $18 (Mann Oil Filter which also manufactures AMG filters)
$75 for labor

I started changing the oil myself after I did some research on how actually easy it was to change the oil on the 5.5L motor and that's one of the good upsides about this car.

GS3Tek

iTrader: (8)

Geez, which stealership quoted him that??? For one????
I can see maybe all 4 but for one???
That's about the price alone for these old s class.

My 01 is still fine, granted it only has 34k miles. I'm not going to look forward to that (which reminds me to check again for any cracks)

bad co

Seriously how can you say I dont want a bmw or a jaguar or audi or vw pheaton or a mercedes because all I want from a car is reliabilty. Thats like saying all I want from a girl friend is punctuality. The only way to have fun with most lexus's is to drive with your head out the sun roof but that gets boring too.

In all honesty here is my list of Merc's :89 300E - bullet proof i6 and still plenty of them on road today. 97 C280 It was a nice car didnt keep it long enough traded for a 98 ML320. 98 ML320- the first luxo suv on the market. quiet very refined 3.2l v6 it was no power house but it sure was smooth. No electrical gremlins traded for 2002 ML320. 02 ML 320 I loved my first w163 but when MB showed me the face lifed w163 oooooh I went all out dessert sand exterior black interior "sports" pacakege bose sound etc. the car was loaded from the factory. 200 miles rain sensing wipers dont work take it to dealership cant figure it out they have to put in a new sensor. in order to do that they had to removed the windshield, they broke it. 5,000 miles tranny stuck in 1st valve bodies had to be replaced and was in the shop for the next 2k miles with the same issue. Finaly mb dropped in a new tranny and it was golden. Shipped the car out to europe in 06. Bought another ML it was 350 it was a 06 w164 chassi, car was loaded as well I loved the alpine rain color (simaler to break water blue on lexus) the interior was full alcantara, some one ramed into it toatled.. now I am enjoying a ML500, now that is a great suv no problems so far just like my ML350. by spring I shall be driving a ML63 (oredering soon)!! My current dd is my 04 CLK500 now that is a fun car it pulls to it eats z's and g's and mustang gt's all day long its been trouble free since the day i bought it (this winter). The moral is I have been through a lot of mb's and trust them and find them to be the best cars on the road. The c63 is a maniac of a car. It has torque beyond belief in the is-f you basicly have to wait till redline to feel the punch along with m3. The is-f looks a bit like a toy car something how wheel would do. the is-f body was basicly designed by tuners for lexus and lexus just blanded it down a bit. the m3 is for ***** enough said. The c63 is great value it sounds the best and it has tons of mods on the market. the is-f has a home made intake and exhaust on the market and a tune made by a man in a shed.

Gojirra99

Real garage queen My 03 SC430 was too, but it has roughly 34k miles now, I've been putting more miles on ever since it became my dd after I traded the G35c for the LS460L.

IS-SV

Good observations on a couple of problems with C-class:

1. The non-working vanity mirror might have been caused by visor not latched into mounting (when pulled out for swiveling the visor, the vanity mirror light turns off)

2. The rear door latch assembly is known junk, and they often break (the door lock pin falls off as you observed). Fortunately when Mercedes fixes this under warranty, they replace the entire rear door lock assembly (not just the pin) with a redesigned/updated assembly to fix the problem for good.

I6turbo

iTrader: (1)

LOL MB claims of "our cars are reliable now" are about like the domestic's claims of "THIS is the world-class car that beats the imports." The same [here-to-fore empty] promises have been made since they first went down hill (MB in the '90's, domestics in the '80's), so it's hard to take them seriously until they prove themselves over time, and time will tell whether or not they are meaningfully better. But just because the same old claims are made for the newest generation, I'm not convinced.

I've owned several MB's (starting back when they WERE actually the best car built), BMW's, and one Audi. I can't for the life of me understand why they can't/won't get their reliability issues sorted out. If they did that one thing, they'd conquer the automotive world. Can't they just get Toyota to design their electrical systems for them??? That right there would fix most of their problems.

DustinV

I've had no problems with my last two Mercedes products. My ex-C200 CDI and my current E230 are problem-free cars - and they do have a lot of electronic and high-tech features (computer software etc.) on board despite being meagerly equipped.

The notion that Germans (Europeans) can't build reliable electrical components is a stupid myth that probably arose on the internet based on cars. Many Japanese automotive firms use components supplied by a German electrical manufacturer if I am not mistaken, including Toyota and Lexus. I'm pretty positive I read this somewhere once. The firm name begins with an "O" but I can't remember their name or find it on the internet. It's not Osram...

Threxx

Are you thinking of Bosch? That's probably the most common German electric company found on cars made outside of Germany.

The general notion most educated car people have is that Germans tend to over-engineer their cars causing far too many complications that all have the potential of failure and causing a chain reaction of failures. It's pretty true, too.

I mean just for example on my 07 335i I had a single door lock actuator fail at around 15k miles. On any other car you'd still be able to manually unlock and lock the door with your hand or by grabbing the door handle, and all the rest of your doors would most definitely continue to lock and unlock electrically and manually. Not on the 335i. It has some sort of a door lock 'network' to where when one actuator fails, ALL of the doors will no longer lock or unlock and to make matters worse NONE of them would open manually either. The only way to escape my own car was to lower the window take out my physical key from inside the 'keyless go fob' (whatever it's called) and unlock the door from the inside out. Terrible design IMO... just stupid that such a small failure should cause such a reaction of failures, and even possibly dangerous in some situations where a person needs to exit the vehicle quickly or can't open the window to let themselves out. I asked the dealer about it and they just sort of chuckled and said that was just one of many oddities about how BMWs were designed.

I'm sure some BMW engineer somewhere had a good reason in his mind for why the car should behave like that but in the end it translated to a really stupid design. BMW engineers don't seem to understand what Japanese engineers usually do understand - less complication leads to greater reliability. Sometimes less is more.

I6turbo

iTrader: (1)

I'm sure they CAN build reliable electrical componnents, but for some strange reason they don't elect to install enough of them in their automobiles. LOL

It's no myth that my own CLK430 had 30 different warranty issues by the time it had accumulated 28K miles in 3 years. Practically all of them were electrical -- sunroof wouldn't fully close, CD player would voluntarily go back to a different disc and different track when you start the car, certain lights malfunctioned, various control units needed to be reprogrammed, etc, etc, etc,... Contrast that to the Toyotas in my signature that have had the COMBINED total of the following issues during their entire lives of 235K total miles:
-- '03 LS430 driver side mirror control switch got balky, replaced under warranty

Denso seems to be the dominant Japanese electrical component supplier for Japanese makers. There are certainly several others, but mostly Japanese on the Japan-built vehicles.

IS-SV

LOL,

I haven't heard any MB claims of "our cars are reliable now". They are smarter than trying to advertise their way out of a problem I think. Where have you seen this claim in any of their advertisements?