I think that Mercedes Benz now is concernd with getting the cars off the boats and sold.

With so many people leasing nowadays- and the ability to write off some of that. Mercedes high end customer realizes that they may only keep the car for 4 years.

For that 4 years MB warranty covers them.

Why should a Mercedes Benz inital buyer care? Besides long term value goes out teh window when you lease a new car every 4 years- and as prices continue to increase- leasing may be the only option for some.

Besides after the car is purchased- MB has their money...now they can go after the second buyer with the lucrative service business and parts. Look at how ridiculously expensive Honda parts are compared the the cost of the whole car.

Mercedes might soon follow suit.

And Mercedes Starmark? I'm not sure but I think a company that the owner of the Miami Dolphins, Wayne H., owns underwrites that- so again it is nothing off of Mercedes bottom line.

Mercedes makes profit on the C-class cars. The downward stampede cheapens the brand.

Mercedes is banking that the affluent upper market is buying for prestige and no longer for thrift (We all know how cheap Mercedes Diesels are to run in the long run) .

So where is the Mercedes affluent customer to go anyhow without moving downward? Bentley??? Hardly- now the reliability of those Bentleys and upkeep is out of many of the Mercedes Owners reach anyhow.

Mercedes is simply abandoning some of its original goals those being- the best in:

reliability
long term value
Car for those who can aford the best
Build quality

(I believe Build quality has slipped more than anything else...one only has to look at the M-class- many people in MB service thought that some of the New M-class body panels gaps were so large and uneven after assembly that the cars had been in accidents!) The New C- Class cars have American economy car cloth interiors.

Realistically the topic of this is pretty juvenille. We all know why we purchased Mercedes, and for the most part we are trying to hold onto a quality level that was established by a company that has joined another with much lower quality standards. Talk about polluting the base stocks.

I'm no more envious of Lexus than Honda- but I am sorry to see things of special quality fade from our culture and just become more of the mass of things we call "stuff". As humans we should aspire to make things better- not just the same.