I have owned 7 MB's since 1990, two of them were fairly old when I acquired them so I won't include them in my comments. Of the remaining 5, I purchased a '95E, '97E, and '98E new and a '97C36 and '00E4-matic at less than 3 years old (both currently owned). Obviously I love driving Benzes, but I must admit I'm getting tired of the litany of problems. During the last 10 years I've also had 3 new Hondas in the family, and I find it hard to believe but the total warranty items on all three put together was less than any one of the MB's. I have rationalized my way around this with everything from how nice it is to drive, to safety, to body integrity at 10+ years old but I'm getting tired of hiding the number of dealer visits from my friends that have switched to Toyota, Honda, Acura, Infinity and Lexus who enjoy the ribbing. Be that as it may, I use two dealers, one in my home city and one near my vacation home, they have both been terrific and the owners are now personal friends outside the showroom. MB Canada on the other hand tend to be unresponsive, have poor or non-existant customer skills, arrogant at times and generally have a "we can do no wrong and know it all attitude". They have looked after me well due to the dealers' effort. In conclusion, I love driving the cars but a major shakeup at MB is in order. The component failure is too high ( on a par with my 3 Dodge Caravans). The rattles, squeaks and bad radio reception in this day and age is unacceptable. I don't want to list the problems here, but I convinced myself that it was due to leading edge technology, in retrospect the problems have been in ordinary items like belt tensioners, head gaskets etc. that are common to other manufacturers. I hate to admit it but when I am due for a new family vehicle I will do some real soul searching before I write a cheque for another MB, not withstanding my personal relationships. I am getting rather disillusioned and no longer have the patience to continue to make excuses for MB's quality or reliability record. I certainly wouldn't own one past the extended warranty. The excuses just don't cut it anymore, MB needs to figure out how the Japanese manufacturers seem to avoid the large number problems. I know they are not perfect either but MB needs to take a hard look at their problems or they eventually will lose repeat customers and buyers for their used vehicles.