31st Jul 2007, 04:04

When I purchased my C200 Elegance in 2004 with 50,000km I thought I was getting a good reliable German car (Excellent build quality). But unfortunately this has not been the case, the car has now covered 155,000km and in the past 3 years I have spent over $27,500AUD on maintenance including a new gearbox at 90,000km at a cost of $7,000AUD which completely stopped working with no drive at all while I was 12km up a dirt road in central Australia, this was just after a service at my local Mercedes Dealer who took no responsibility for the problem. It's a little cheaper to run now that I go to a local mechanic, but my last bill still came in at $4,000AUD. Although having said that I do drive the car extremely hard so I expected the maintenance costs to be high, but not this high. I also had a 1976 240D and the engine ceased on the highway just after an expensive service too go the indestructible diesel not! Other than the maintenance problems and the cost, it is one of the nicest car's I have owned to drive and performs effortlessly on the highway, but the accelerator spends its whole time to the floor hence why my kick down button is broken.