26th Jul 2019, 17:38
Agreed. I live in a fairly affluent area where loads of people buy Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, and so on. I know way too many people who've owned these and wound up having serious issues with them. Granted the worst era was probably in the early 2000s, but there is a reason why you'll see 5 year old BMW 7 series, a car that costs almost $100,000 for $20,000. As soon as the warranty is out, there's a HUGE array of things that if they break, will cost a small fortune to fix. For example, I had a neighbor who's daughter, for some inexplicable reason bought a BMW 5 series used. She had it for exactly 48 hours before the headlights stopped working. Turns out that the car has a separate ECU for the lights, it had gone bad, and cost almost $1,500 to replace.
So no, I won't be buying one of these cars. If you want consistent, reliable luxury, best to go with a Lexus, Acura, or hell - probably even a Lincoln.
25th Jul 2019, 20:37
Having owned a string of German cars, you are right about the varying parts quality. I don't see why owners of German cars would "back fire" on the review for being honest. That's why people come to Carsurvey.org! I myself check to see what the common problems are before buying a car - I know the car/s I want to buy; now I want to see if X variant before the year 20XX has a dodgy water pump design, but not the variant with the Y engine, etc. I know that buying a used BMW for example (I'm on my second one after a few Audis) will never be like owning a Toyota Corolla, but here in New Zealand, the poorly-designed (but well-maintained) winding roads paved with coarse chip, require a very good handling car with good sound insulation, and European cars are so common here now (thanks to the influx of used Japanese-market vehicles for the last 25 years) that most mechanics can fix them - and brand new OEM or compatible parts (heck, even original) are actually comparable to Japanese.
Granted, as a rule, Japanese cars will be more reliable, but the modern ones are just as expensive to fix when something goes wrong, say with the coils or ABS. Having a Daihatsu does not mean a cheap starter motor. The coil for a Mitsubishi Lancer or Mazda3 is dearer than that of my previous BMW 3-series (and that was factory original pricing), for example. Unexpected, but true.
Mercedes is certainly long past its glory days - when they built cars like Rolex builds watches. Not since complicated electronics. And compliance with German plastic recyclability laws. The old Mercedeses I grew up with drove around with the prestige it deserved; the new ones are tarted up and not even pretty, let alone good. European cars are hit and miss, but they still exist in very large numbers for reasons other than outright reliability. Prestige doesn't even count anymore - many common BMWs or Audis are priced the same as a Mazda or Ford in Europe.