I used a Nissan Altima as an example. She is also considering a Hyundai, Chevy Malibu and Ford Fusion.

I am trying to step away from this equation because I do most of my own maintenance work. I have had many diesel MB's and a couple where the tranny has failed, She has been great while I attempt to keep these cars on the road. All of our cars have at least 266K on them.
My wife drives 100 miles round trip in snow country. I thought it would be nice to have a 05-05 E320 cdi with stability control and some of the other creature comforts like the heating/cooling seats plus the other upgrade for the seats.
She likes the idea of driving something pretty new. I would like something that will protect her more and provide excellent fuel mileage.

Don't think the cars you listed in the prior post have the options you've listed. Probably have to jump up to a newer car in the $30,000 - $40,000 range to meet your criteria.

Good luck! I just went through the new car process with my wife and ended up with a new Lexus RX-350 to obtain many of those extra's. I felt the same as the prior poster in that I didn't ever want to hear a complaint about "forcing" her to buy something. Peace and harmony can be quite expensive.

__________________
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need.

Tell your wife to consider a Honda. You can get a very nice Accord in that 18K range. An excellent car!!

__________________
Jimmy L.
'05 Acura TL 6MT
2001 ML430 My Spare

Gone:
'95 E300 188K "Batmobile" Texas Unfriendly Black
'85 300TD 235K "The Wagon" Texas Friendly White
'80 240D 154K "China" Scar engine installed
'81 300TD 240K "Smash"
'80 240D 230K "The Squash"
'81 240D 293K"Scar" Rear ended harder than Elton John

I thought new cars where less expensive in the states than here. Maybe people do not negotiate as hard as I do? A pretty loaded up 2013 honda civic le with freight is 18k plus sales tax. The car has a 24k window sticker price here. That is six K under list.

I simply asked the local dealer to give me a price we could both live with on that car and phone me when he had it. . This might have been a little discouraging as it was to be a christmas gift for the wife that he still lost the sale.

I decided to apply a little more effort while thinking about it and aquired the toyota corolla with a reasonable amount of options for 13,250 plus sales tax. It is a year old but with only under five K miles suitable for the intended purpose. Simply a short term lease return to a leasing pool sent out to a car dealer on consignment. Not even being due for it's first oil change yet.

My difficulty today is broaching the dealers aquired way of dealing with customers in a way that works. Obviouisly it still can be done at least here. Far too many if not the majority are paying much too close to list prices for their newer cars. Since the differance in monthly dollars is not that great over 84 months customers seem to eat it up. When only the payment per month is the issue for the majority of purchasers we simpler people are geting beaten if not careful and somewhat skilled at negotiation.

Honda dealers are desperate locally to recover from both the production interuption and the poor image quality when the manufacturer defaulted on quality and appoligized for the 2012 production run of honda civic cars. There are scads of their leftovers still around some areas like mine and I would avoid them. Still there wil be deals soon on them that will be very cheap just to get rid of them.

They suffer from much lower levels of sound insulation. A really cheap plastic dash, poor steering ratios for handeling etc.

So they are just orphans in a producton series of the civic cars. Their general reliability will just be as high as ever though.

I also take safety into account on those things. A Honda or Nissan is not going to hold up anywhere near a MB in a crash. Someone at my wife's school just got into a side hit in their tin can car and is still in the hospital with numerous problems. Not worth it.

__________________
-diesel is not just a fuel, its a way of life-
'15 GLK250 Bluetec 118k - mine - (OC-123,800)
'17 Metris(VITO!) - 37k - wifes (OC-41k)
'09 Sprinter 3500 Winnebago View - 62k (OC - 67k)
'13 ML350 Bluetec - 95k - dad's (OC-98k)
'01 SL500 - 103k(km) - dad's (OC-110,000km)
'16 E400 4matic Sedan - 148k - Brothers (OC-155k)

Much of life is luck of the draw so to speak. I remember when frontal crash rating where so prevelant and advertised. Many safe rated amerian big three cars of that period would collapse their roofs in a light rollover down to the seat level.

I use to observe this at the local towing storage centre. Almost absolutly no roof support. At the same time those cars had a five star frontal crash rating.

Personally I would not like to be in a serious collision diving a lot of cars out there. When I say luck of the draw or coincidence. It is not primarily skill that has enabled me to have escaped any form of serious accident out there personally over the years. I have driven one pile of miles too.

It I believe was more just not being in the wrong place at any given time. If you want one tough car for cabin integrity the volkswagon jetta is it. We will not buy another but for what ours went through at the wifes hands. Most other cars would have killed her.

Talking about safety hurts car sales. That car is really very tough in that context though. There was not one piece of glass left in the whole car and every body panel was destroyed. Yet you could still open three of the doors. Even the verticle drop onto the roof only dented it. The car slid twenty feet down the power pole upside down. The side impact on the pole should have pushed that side of the car in much further than it did as well. That was the door that would not open. The car went off the highway. Dug it's nose in the ground and launched over some small trees before hitting the hyro pole. What did not escape my notice was the overall serious damage was everywhere. I never figured out what got the trunk and rear area. Maybe the car cartwheeled off the highway. There just where no marks indicating that. Yet the cabin area was still almost square.

WOW!
what year Jetta?
I'm liking mine more and more every day... it's an 85 though. likely NOT the one you are talking about, but I LOVE it's 50mpg...

__________________
John HAUL AWAY, OR CRUSHED CARS!!! HELP ME keep the cars out of the crusher! A/C Thread
"as I ride with my a/c on... I have fond memories of sweaty oily saturdays and spewing R12 into the air. THANKS for all you do!

My drivers:
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5-5SPEED!!!

1987 300TD
1987 300TD
1994GMC 2500 6.5Turbo truck... I had to put the ladder somewhere!

I have an 05 E320 CDI, it is a good car I have 175k miles on it. I got it with 154k for $13,600 +ttt. But I have had to replace the motor mounts and two tires. Plus 1 oil change. It got 42 mpg on the drive home of 200 miles. Mixed around town driving I get about 30. Or I did before I converted it to run on SVO. Now I get 150 miles for every gallon of diesel fuel I purchase, but that is another story.

I think Toyota's are boring to drive and to look at. Honda's make me sick to ride in, I think they are built so tight they are twichy. I do not hold Nissan's in high regard either. If I had the option to purchase a GM diesel car I would but (the bastages) do not sell one in US.

Maybe you should take you wife for a ride in an Altima, then in the CDI. I am sure if she picked the altima for the same price it is because of some preconceived notion in her head. The Mercedes will feel wicked fast and get better fuel mileage and ride and handle better. I could type for pages I will stop there...

Newer model mass market sedans will provide a large increase in crash safety versus an older MB, so you'll achieve that goal regardless. Are they better than a w211 sedan; I dunno. From my perspective they are good enough that I wouldn't necessarily push her toward the Benz for that reason. Given she drives in snow country I might favor an FWD sedan.

I vote letting her choose what she wants. If she goes for a newer ToyHonSan sedan, revel in the time and money you save not having to repair an older MB. In my world view that's win-win.

That smashed one was a 2000 tdi. Still volkswagon had the double body structure back quite a bit further. Certainly your year has it. I suspect it was intended as a method of stiffening up their unibodies originally in design. Yet either by intent or accident it made their cars very strong compared to many if not all.. If you notice even the floors are doubled. With a space between except where the contact points are to increase strength.

Try to maintain your 85 as it was one of the better years and will be hard to find a replacement for.. I hope you are aware that the 85 was the last year of mechanical valves. They are shimmed for adjustment.

Check your valve clearances sometime if unsure or certain they have perhaps never been done. Can make a signifigant differance. You order the individual adjustment shims from a dealer if needed.

The secret of those cars is not the high highway miles as on average we spend little of the total use time out on them. On short trips around your immediate area you do not have true fuel enrichement like the cold engine enrichment system on gas cars. . That system stays on until the gas engine warms up really butchering short range fuel milage.

Our house to town and return after letting the car cool down while in town. On a cold day perhaps at least 2.00 in gas. Perhaps .50 cents worth of fuel or less in an 85 jetta diesel. Not much differance until you become aware you are making hundreds of trips into town per year for parts,groceries, and many other things. We stil have a very low milage complete 91 lower block in storage. Plus a turbo 85 engine and transmision with 180k miles sitting idle.

These are indirect injection engines like the mercedes 616 and 617. So change your oil as scheduled. It does soot up.

I never owned a series of cars as cheap to maintain for parts costs as well as being simple to fix in general. Never had transmission or serious engine issues either. For quite a few years we owned a batch of the 1.6 diesel engined ones.

One of my employees had developed a quick head gasket change that I never approved of. Or would practice myself. The head gaskets are a periodic replacement item on those engines. He would pull the timing belt, remove the injector lines. Take out the head bolts. Slightly lift the head and remove the old head gasket. Slide a new one in and bolt the head back down with new stretch bolts. He never got into dificulty once by doing this either. Still today I would not recommend it. Certainly never on a customers car. He did inspect the pulled gasket looking for any material that may have separated from the gasket and transfered to the block or head though.

By actual ownership experience the best where the 85 and 86 models by far. Volkswagon ruined a good thing. I used to drive them all over north america so much I got sick and tired of driving individual cars and they still ran well.

In general in our climate rust was the cause of their demise. If I ever run across one of the years I preffer in good shape I will grab it. They are all pretty well gone here now. Might see one perhaps every nine months or so on average now. Most we owned had the best car heaters we have ever had. The tdi models have no cabin heater at all in comparison.

If you have the turbo model and ever have cause to replace the head gasket. Do not panic when you see all the cracks in the head casting between the valves. Those cracks normally develop with miles and do no harm. There is some standard that you should not be able to slide a dime or whatever in the cracks. We never had a totally bad one anyways.

Your car has the water trap under the rear axel area. A two stage low oil pressure warning system that is really effective if you are unaware as well. That model was so well thought out it still amazes me what volkswagon did with it and managed to mess it up pretty bad with time. Right now if the 85-86 turbo versions were on the dealers lots with more modern body styles. I really believe they would sell in droves. The tdi models while more sophisticated are a different animal almost totally.

Im still on the hunt for one - it was and still is my favorite car a 1985 VW Golf mk2 1.6 diesel.

cant seem to find any in the houston, dallas, austin, ft worth, cc, galveston etc etc area.

__________________
2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)

I like the BMW 335D also. Smaller than the E-class, sporty/fast for a diesel. BMW has offered the 335D since about 2008. Might still be a bit out of your price range.

Back in 2004-05, I was contemplating buying a "new" car. One of the cars on my short list was the then new/redesigned Malibu (go ahead, shake your heads, but I was thinking of some of the then-new technology, such as the electronic power steering). I stumbled across a 2001 E320 (petrol) with 47,000 miles on the clock which was in pretty good condition and still had a little factory warranty left on it. (The Altima was also on my short list, at least until I drove a few more of them.)

The Chevy and the MB were each about $24,000, and the question with which I grappled was how could a nearly four-year-old car with 47K miles be worth the same as a new car with a full warranty, etc. I didn't grapple long, because the answer was that they weren't worth the same. The MB was the better car and that's why it's value was still that high (I actually got it for about 4-6K less than market at the time).

In the end, naturally, I went with the MB. I've put nearly 100K miles on it (it's at 146,xxx) and still runs great. I've probably put more money into it than I would the infernal Malibu, but I can't imagine how much worse the passage of those 99K miles would have been having to drive that thing instead of the W210. I'm also not looking for another car, but I think I'd have already swapped out the Malibu if I'd gone that way.

From a driver's standpoint, and particularly on road trips, there is little better than an Mercedes, and few of the Asian or domestic makes measure up.

This was petrol vs. petrol...had I been looking at petrol vs. diesel, there wouldn't have been any comparison to make.

Just my .02.

In 1997 we bought an 88 300E (W124) with 168K miles, for $8K. I remember on the way home, I was contemplating the intelligence of the decision when we passed a brand new Geo Metro, which IIRC, at that time were around $10K new. So I relaxed. In my mind a 9 year old Benz with 168K miles was better than a brand new Geo. At least, I sure was hoping it was.

Over the time we owned that car, it needed a couple repairs. One was a B2 piston (IIRC) in the trans, at a cost of around $450 at the dealer. And a belt tensioner and water pump, and a heat valve which cost like $35. And that was it. We traded the car off at 199K miles, and it still ran and drove excellent.

But none of that speaks about what the car was like to own, or drive. Like driving home late one night with the radio on low, and hearing mosquitos hitting the windshield. No rattles or squeaks or wind noise. Or getting annoyed over a tiny squeak, and realizing it was the leather in the seat I was sitting on. I never owned a car that solid and quiet before.

But along with that quiet, was the mechanical feel of the engine and wheels through the pedals and steering wheel. The solid feel of the brakes. The handling. The acceleration. It wasnt a super fast car at 7 seconds to 60, but it sure wasn't a slouch and could top 100 MPH with ease, any time, every time.

Then there was the safety. I never really wore a seat belt until we owned that car. I remember the brochure that came with the car, showing all the safety features built into it, engineered into it. Most people dont talk about it, but Mercedes pioneered the ABS system and made it what it was, as well as SRS. Every manufacturer has it now, but drive them and compare. My wifes brand new Jimmy when I met her, the brakes were total crap. So is the Ford and our Jeep. They work, but not with anywhere near the feel of performance of any Mercedes ive driven, including the 97 Camry I bought my step daughter.

By august of 97 I was pretty committed to wearing the seat belt, and had convinced my Dad into doing so. It was just too hard to argue against it. Then the news of Princess Di hit the news, and how her body guard lived. How Di would most likely have lived, had she been belted. Even Mercedes was fascinated, they never built the car to survive that kind of an impact. The best car is the car with the brakes and handling to avoid an accident, but also protect you if the worst happens.

I dont know anything much about the newer cars. I have lost all interest in computers that track where I go and record the last 20 minutes of my last movements. But if I were, I am pretty sure that a 7 year old Mercedes that sold for twice what a new Nissan sells for, is at least 15 years ahead of it. Our daughter isnt real impressed with the three year old Altima she traded her 97 Camry for, and a 97 Camry couldnt hold a candle to a 87 W124. Im thinking my old 1989 124 is still better than a new Altima, without ever test driving one.

But to be honest, $18K is a lot of money and a lot can happen to any car over a 7 year period. I would want one with as low of miles as I could find, with full and extensive records showing timely oil changes (5000 miles or less, 3000 preferred), with no gaps, and no accident history. I would also want to buy that car from a reputable MB dealer as a certified used car, and buy an extended warrantee offered by MBNA. I would want all of that, only after having a PPI done at an independent shop which specializes in Mercedes. Even if it means waiting, or driving some distance to find one. Like they say round these parts, there is no cheap Mercedes.