On and off there are posts about fast depreciation on some vehicles, and I have been saying buying used MB is such a "great" deal. Well, here's an example

http://www.mbworld.org/forums/merced...black-79k.html

I have zero affiliation with the seller of course. But look at this. 07 SL65 with only 11k miles, extended warranty till 2013

I think sticker for new was probably around 200k (a new 2011 is more than that), and now it's going for whopping 80k. that's 40% residual on a 4 yr car (or maybe 3) with a lot of under mileage.

MB cars in general simply depreciate like crazy. 04-06 E55 can be had for low 20s. 07 S63, it was like 150k new, now if you look hard you can find them for maybe 60-70k.

The normal MB lineup also depreciate but seems to be at a little better rate. The AMGs tumbles in price like no tomorrow.

Sometimes when I think about it, buying a 3-4 yr old MB with extended warranty sounds like a pretty darn good deal...

 

First of all be careful of the extended warranty. I have CPO warranty on one of my cars and every time something goes wrong, they tell me its not covered.

Then, there's a reason why certain cars depreciate so badly. For instance a friend of mine purchased a CL600 with 40k on the clock for around $30k - and right away had to put $8k into relatively minor repairs.

A guy that lives on my block purchased a used S600 about a year ago. I don't know how much he paid for it, or what trouble he's been or hasn't been having, since we don't know each other. But something is telling me, this thing is draining his bank account big time. He was apparently rear ended, or backed into something - and his passenger side tail light was broken. He was driving it with the broken tail light for about six months, if not more. Recently he replaced it with a tail light from what seems to be a different year model, - it is tinted, and doesn't match the other tail. Kind of hilarious to see one of the most expensive cars with a repair job like that.

I can snap a pic tomorrow

 

That's the problem with these cars. My father's 2001 S500 was destroyed in a house fire in 2006. The car was 95k out the door and he was payed 35k for his totaled car. The AMGs depreciate like crazy. The rest of the line isn't too great either. My recommendation is to always buy the manufacturer's extended warranty. The factory warranty on my 07 S550 just expired and I purchased the best extended warranty MB had. Recently had engine and trans mounts replaced for a slight vibration at idle and it was fully covered. The more complicated the engine, the faster they depreciate. The motor in the 600s are notoriously complicated and difficult to repair. They aren't known for their reliability either.

 

the best extended warranty for mb has been the chrysler one, platinum unlimited miles. too bad they stopped the warranty last july. have seen tons of people (and friend's friends) who got tons of stuff replaced under the extended warranty.

but of course, the prices of these cars are low for a reason that's why no way i would get one without reasonable warranty. no, i don't trust the cars

 

Thing about these private sellers are you never know whats wrong with it, and chances are there is something wrong with it that's why they selling cheap.

With the turbo engines like the v12 chances are it's got one of those cheap easy engine mods/chips that boosts big power. Now something is wrong so the old ecu tune gets put back and they trying to get rid of it before the whole thing blows up.

 

This kind of alarming depreciation today is typical of most $100K-plus European cars, including MB, BMW, Porsche, Jag.

 

Yeah AMG cars depreciate like a rock and it hurts overall the brands resale value figures whereas Acura will always win awards b/c they sell tarted up Accords that don't depreciate as much b/c they don't cost nearly as much. Its odd that their rarity does not keep values high though, there can only be a few S63s, and S65s around for example.

Black Series CLK ain't depreciating though

Hell you can get a Bentley Continential coupe for 70k now!

 

Go for used S65 , cavernous back seat space for baby

 

well it's possible, but if you look across the whole used car market (even dealership), these amg cars are selling for about the same. i mean, at dealership you will probably see this car going for 90k with a cpo stamp on it. so it seems overall the resale is just that bad

true, but what i am trying to say is mb (and amg) are exceptionally bad. if you compare the same 07 m5 vs 07 e63 with similar mileage, you will see the m5 wins by almost 10k on the resale. they had similar msrp to begin with.

yup, i was thinking the same thing! some of these cars aren't as common, but still they drop in price like crazy. and another thing to notice. for example if you look at used lx570, it's very rare, and very expensive. it's simple supply and demand. but on say s65, it's also just as rare, but price is very low. and it's not like they sell like hot cakes either. that says something

hahhahaa, not a bad idea. to be frank we had been tossing the idea of a s63, but still it's for 5 people. i see the advantage of 7 seaters (no, not minivan )

 

Try to find a used LS600 for a decent price vs. an S600 or S63/65.

It's not even close how badly MB depreciates. With our experience with the ML it still scares me a little to think what we'd be getting into. Is the deep discount enough to justify the possible maintenance costs?

 

the way i see it is that people who buy high end amg cars NEW basically pay WHATEVER IT TAKES to get balla status.
they drive the snot out of the car, treat it poorly, and dump it say 3 years later.
who wants to buy that? not many! the above plus the complexity, huge cost of repairs, and 'not new' make it less desirable.
the only thing worse than buying a used high end benz is buying any used jag.

 

u kidding? lots of used LS600's for under 50k - they've depreciated like rocks too.

 

Could it be that the market for a used 80k car is not that big? Especially with a marquee that has a reputation for being expensive to fix and not all that reliable. I guess I'm too damn practical to understand spending 80k on a car in general. I would personal spend 80k on a down payment on a cheap condo that I can rent out to somebody.

 

Awhile back there was a Barrett-Jackson auction where the winning bid went for $700,000 for a Veyron. Only thing was, the bidder flaked. When, it was offered back to the underbidders the car went unsold and Barrett-Jackson bought the car for $700K. Not bad, half price for a Veyron.

you can read rest of the story here

http://jalopnik.com/#!5649147/bugatt...00-winning-bid

but yeah, talk about depreciation. It just goes to show that not even super/exotics are immune to it.

 

I think two large parts of this is from the AMG cars to Maserati is the maintenance concern after a couple years and the gap in affordability for those buying the cars new and the middle market buying used.

People that are buying these cars new are typically not the same type that would buy something used and the amount of people that can afford the car drops off dramatically once you remove the handful that are buying new.

There is a much greater market for cars in the 40-80k car range in terms of those that can afford them, kind of.... Say you’re looking at a 150k car new and is listed at 120k 2 years old, if you can afford 120k then you just pay 150k and get it with the new warranty so that math does not work.

These cars have to rapidly depreciate until they hit the edge of the market where there is a larger group of people to afford the car.

Not only that, if you can only afford the car used at 2-3 years old chances are the maintenance is more then you can afford too which drives the price of these cars down even faster.