5th Jul 2018, 18:54
Odd to see so many negative comments regarding these cars, in sharp contrast to the Edmunds.com consumer reviews for the same models which, with a few notable exceptions, are overwhelmingly positive. Weird.
https://www.edmunds.com/mercedes-benz/e-class/2006/diesel/consumer-reviews/
16th Sep 2018, 12:03
Edmunds is a flawed site - for all brands that is, not just for Mercedes. I even suspect the site is filtering the bad reviews. It's just suspect how many cars with problems have great reviews on Edmunds. Just skip that site, have a look here on carsurvey.org, see all the negative reviews here on all brands included, this is more real.
18th Sep 2018, 13:08
I would agree. Carsurvey has far more accurate reviews than your average popular car website. It's just a shame Carsurvey is not as popular as it used to be - most reviews on here tend to be pretty old. Great if you are looking at 80s and 90s cars, but from 2010 onwards, reviews are low in numbers across all manufacturers. I love this website's simple honest design and I wish it had more traffic.
5th Jan 2019, 11:11
Transmission problems were largely widespread and repaired under warranty, leaks fluid contamination from faulty cooling radiator.
Common SBC pump replacements (sudden brake failure).
Ball joints at low miles.
Cooling fan, A/C control valve, gas tank replacement.
Yet to talk about the biggest problem with Mercedes: the owners think the silver star is asking them to deny any problem and expensive repairs. So don't be surprised to hear 100000 miles and not a single problem; the story is (very) different on Mercedes forums.
5th Jan 2019, 15:52
I have to agree with this. Mercedes make good cars no doubt, and a cut above your average car in terms of refinement and luxury. However, they are just a machine like any middle of the road Ford or Toyota. They will have wear and tear, and whilst you might get a used one for a good price, expect the repairs to be twice that of your average car, even if you find a good independent specialist.
5th Jan 2019, 21:58
Mercedes or any other manufacturer cannot really ask (that's not the correct word for it, but the right word escapes me at this time) owners to deny problems - this isn't Third World politics. People buy a product with certain brands with particular expectations, especially when the product is expensive. And buyers know when something is amiss, regardless of what the factory says.
German taxi drivers who religiously bought Mercedes E-class cars as taxis since the 1950s, started buying Opels and Audis in the late 1990s because they started having problems with the new E-class cars, and private buyers were buying the last of the W124 (aka 260E/300E) cars which were far more dependable.
Remember though, in places like North America, the only Mercedeses sold are always the highly-specified, very powerful, and very complicated models which have components that will fail in time and expensive to fix. In those markets, they do not have the common, garden-variety bread-and-butter models that are used as rep or company vehicles. No (or the odd) 4-cylinder car with a manual gearbox, always with electric leather seating rather than durable cloth with manual adjustments. Are there Mercedes models that last 100K mi (or 160K km) without a problem - or only minor things that happen on normal cars? There will be, but nowhere near as many as when Mercedes was infinitely dearer and more sparsely equipped (but when money was put into the engineering and durability of components) in decades past.
Mercedes is not the Rolex standard it was a while ago, I see no real prestige in Mercedes (their cars stylistically also look ugly these days), only complication. A Range Rover to me is more consistent with prestige where the entire product is well-designed and does not challenge anyone's aesthetic sense. Pity about absolute reliability, but at least if you could afford to own or repair one, everything else is there, which is not something I can say about late-model Mercedes cars.
In the true build quality, reliability and dependability sense, the brand that is most like the "real" Mercedes of yore, is Lexus. Buy it, run it, service it, and it will not break. The way you see African Mercedes W123 taxis with 800K km. But it's not truly a Mercedes replacement, because what's missing in Lexus and Toyota is true innovation, rather than just adapting other makers' features and "making them better," and also their design (inside and out). I dare say that Hyundai, Genesis, and Kia designs are far more coherent and less of an eyesore.
9th Jan 2019, 14:06
Interesting that you think Range Rover is superior. We had major engine issues and suspension failure with ours. Used as a realtor. We also had 2 Mercedes that were not much different. Air conditioner failure and emissions being the most costly. If your primary goal is prestige, I would find qualities that are more important within yourself that you really admire, than what any others think. Anybody can make a car payment. There’s other new choices that work admirably well today.
9th Jan 2019, 22:38
True. But as someone alluded to a couple of posts ago, image and prestige is one thing, but reliability and durability are separate things altogether, and vary wildly from car to car, though in recent years this has been a bit more consistent from one manufacturer to another.
The point is any car is a machine, and no matter what badge is on the front, it will breakdown or have wear and tear issues when the years and miles go by; not even the most expensive car is immune to it, no matter how much people "expect" from certain brands.
Though I do think we have to maintain a certain reliability standard on all cars - myself having had many cars since the 1980s (budget and expensive brands!), it is of course disappointing when really expensive cars go wrong in 2019, at a relatively young age and mileage. Some say quality has improved, others say it has went downhill. I'm undecided.
23rd Jan 2019, 20:27
These are valid points, luxury cars are not necessarily well built quality wise. Still expensive though. For example, the difference for an E-class versus an Opel Insignia in base prices is about 65% (27K vs 44K Euro). Which is actually more than in the eighties comparing the Opel Rekord versus the base W123 200/"E-class" (18K vs 27K Deutsche Marks).
Of course the 2019 E-class is a much better car than the Insigna, but an optioned E-class now, on the street price, is in the 55-60K territory versus approx 35K for the optioned Opel.
Modern MBs are just insanely over-priced, especially since they start falling apart after 4-5 years like most other cars. And don't get me started on the entry level A-class/B-class, they are an utter joke. Cheaply built, no sound insulation, harsh ride, interior starts to rattle after a couple of years - still with a hefty price tag, especially with options. A complete rip-off.
26th Nov 2016, 21:32
What I meant by the Corolla is that cars have gotten better in many ways - a Corolla is really a very ordinary car around the world which can be trashed and neglected, and in the old days would start rusting within less than 10 years, or have enough mechanical problems to not make it worthwhile to keep, but I now start seeing older Corollas managing to last. While cars have gotten more complicated, they are also built to be more durable - they don't rust very quickly even on cheap cars, and the engine components tend to hold up well if serviced. What often writes an otherwise perfectly good used car off is the cost of some repairs, even on something modest. You are correct - Corollas and Mercedes are a different mindset in purchase and reason. But you do have a minimum expectation that a Mercedes (or its ilk), for the price, to be reasonably dependable, or not to have an expensive or practically unrepairable breakdown when properly serviced and through no fault of the owner.