Andrew T.

Hello all, i'm new here. The other day, I crashed my Mercedes-Benz 300E (perfect condition :\ ) into a guard rail, thus totaling it. Anyway, My friend has his 1995 ES300 with 130,000 miles for sale. Is that a lot of miles for this car? I test drove it, and it felt very safe , quiet and sound. I liked the car. What differences are there between my mercedes and the lexus? would I be better off with another mercedes, or the lexus? any big common problems with this car? how are repair costs? any help would be appreciated

cablemanjones

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xsohaib

I have both a Mercedes 420SEL and a ES300. Both are excellent cars in their own way. In terms of ergonomics, Lexus by far exceeds the mercedes, where the mercedes feels like you are sitting on a bench, the lexus es in comparison makes you feel as if you are sitting in a sports car. Another big difference is the size of the steering wheel, mercedes steering wheels are HUGE and thus you feels like you are driving an 18 wheeler compare to lexus ES. The maintenance costs on the Lexus are MUCH MUCH cheaper comapre to mercedes (you don;t have that occassional hard start or no start problem in Lexus like in a mercedes where the fuel pump relay or OVP or something else gets messed up). With all that said the mercedes when you sit in it still feels like really nice, and the star on the hood gives an intoxicating feeling not the same as a LExus. And its a different feeling driving an autobahn cruiser in triple digit speeds which can not really be done in a Lexus feeling entirely safe.

Hope this helps
Sohaib

Lexusfreak

I would give the Lexus some serious consideration.......your friends as well as other ones available in your price range (in case there is a sweet buy out there for perhaps lower milage & different color etc). The milage factor is neither here or there.......milage dosen't mean a whole lot as long as the car was maintained properly & not abused. I just got my 01' (last year of that body style) a month ago & am extremely happy with the car, the Lexus clubs I belong to have been very helpful with advice, help & suggestions. I look forward to many years of reliable service with my car & so far parts have been fairly reasonable & service easy to perform. Good Luck & sorry to hear about your Mercedes.

mmarshall

I agree with all of the comments here about the Lexus being more reliable, cheaper to maintain, and more pleasant to drive, and ordinarily I would strongly recommend one over a Mercedes. But in your specific case, there may be one other thing to take into consideration. Mercedes, in spite of all of the well-publicized quality control and reliability problems, STILL excels (along with Volvo) in one thing.....SAFETY.
You mentioned that you totaled your 300E by driving it into a guard rail. The fact is....this car protected you, and you obviously walked away from it.....which is not surprising when you see how Mercedes frames are built like tanks. So....in a nutshell.......yes, M-B products have slid downhill lately in their defect rate and they can be a pain in the *** to maintain, but if you're going to have any more crashes you will generally be better off in a Mercedes than in a Lexus.

lexusk8

That's a very good point mmarshall. Yes I also have to agree that Benz cars in general cannot compete with Lexus and other luxury brands in regards with QC and reliability, but they're one of the strongest luxury automobiles ever made, not to mention one of the oldest in the industry. I remember seeing a video clip long time ago, showing a person shooting the side doors of a late-model S-class with a 44 Magnum, demonstrating the bulletproof quality of the Mercedes body parts.

Now that's a vivid example of Mercedes safety

fog80

the lexus is no slouch either, i just walked away from this wreck with a few bruises.

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4287590497

lexusk8

Pictures aren't showing up...

But glad to hear you're alright from the wreck.

fog80

sorry bout that.

fog80

more

fog80

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fog80

last one.

mmarshall

I agree...Lexus is no slouch when it comes to crash safety, but Mercedes and Volvo have traditionally excelled at it. In fact, the Mercedes company policy is that Stuttgart sends factory engineers to the site of ANY accident worldwide involving a fatality in any Mercedes-Benz product. The engineers go over the wreckage of the car and the autopsy results on the corpses and report back to headquarters in Stuttgart with recommendations on how to prevent a future re-occurance. (Wish they would do this for quality control ! )
The most famous one in recent years, of course, was the one in Paris that killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend in the European S430. If they had been belted in properly.....(they weren't belted in at all)......they just might have survived it. Trevor-Howard-Jones, who WAS belted in, DID survive.


That's quite an impact to the back of your Lexus....you're lucky the fuel tank didn't go up Pinto or Crown Vic style.

Lexusfreak

From what those pictures look like (not to mention the government crash test ratings) I'd say Lexus is right up there with Mercedes Benz (perhaps not right at the top, if not tied......then right behind them). Glad you were OK Fog80, that was a nasty crash The Japanese are very good at copying the Germans.....eventually passing them in quality & engineering. I'd say they have the safety part pretty much mastered by now too. Fog80's ES held up very well in that crash as overwhelming proof of that.

Nabeel

I still don't think an ES300 will fare as well as any Mercedes in the event of an accident. You have to keep in mind the heritage of the cars. Mercedes have been built for over 100 years and have been running the autobahn almost as long. Mercedes as a company has learned a lot about safety when their carsa are regularly running at triple-digit speeds in their homeland. Mercedes cars have the most solid structures out there. Any 1993 MB will feel more solid and substantial, certainly fare better in a crash, than out '93 ES. Government crash test rating are inherantly flawed because they only test the cars in certain situations and at certain speeds and angles. Out on the road, there are a million different ways to be involved in an accident, and I believe that MB still has the most solid overall cars on the road. Reliability wise, the newer ones are more problematic than the older models, mainly due to electronics going bad. But the older ones can be very very reliable if properly maintained. Just look at how many old MB you see on sale with 200K+ miles. They still command fairly good prices also. There's gotta be a reason for that.