Yes, Mercedes definitely have some great designs over the past few years, and yet it's easier said than done. It may appear pretty and fancy on the drawing board, but when it gets to the assembly line, everything just falls apart. After all, they just lack the mindset of Japanese, determination to make their products reliable and perservereance to come through for their products . They are just the Eropean equivalenant of Detroit atuo industry or even worse.

I have another concern to mention about Mercedes engines. Since early 1990s, some of the Mercedes engines were not manufactured in Germany anymore. Instead, they have outsourced engine production in other countries, for example to a South Korean automaker. If you have the August 1996 issue of Car and Driver, I am sure you have read that the Korean Automaker Ssang Yong has been producing engines for Mercedes. Here's an excerpt from the article.

This agreement led to modern engine in Changwon, on Korea's sourth coast, that builds eight differet Mercedes gas and diesel engines, including the 3.2 liter six-cylinder used in the latest E-class.

So what's it going to be is up to your own discrepency. I know I may have offended some of the Mercedes loyalists on this forum, and I do apologize for that. But I once was a Mercedes loyalist myself, so if I see the company I once had so much passion of being on the wrong track, I can't ignore it and let them go practicing the business the wrong way. Look at the BMW story. They once was in such a bad shape and their chairman almost sold the company to Mercedes. But he didn't not. Who pulled the company back? Neither upper level management nor the chairman himself. It was the BMW loyalists, each holding a tiny piece of the company's stock, refused the Mercedes take over and helped rebuild the company's image and reputation. Just my two cents. Thank you for listening. Let me know if I was wrong.

If I recall correctly, it was the American occupation government that assisted Japan in resuming their automobile production by teaching them American assembly line techniques and quality control.

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2002 500SL(Black/Black)
1992 300SE(Black/Black)
1992 190E 2.3(White/Navy)
1999 VW Jetta TDI(Pearl Green)
1986 SAAB 900 Base 3 door(White)
1983 Porsche 911SC(Chiffon)
1977 VW Scirocco(DiamondSilver)

The fact of the matter is that from design to manufacturing, MB has system wide issues.

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Zafar
94 E320 58000 Miles

I am sure things went well in the drawing room. As soon as the plan goes out of the boundary of the room, things begin to go downhill. Everyone in the company wants to tell the engineers what to do and what not to do in order to make profits. Look at their money grabbing faces. What a shame. They are just too money oriented than product or consumer oriented. But what comes around goes around

The problem with GM, Ford and DCX is that financial people are leading the company unlike Honda and Toyota where technical people are at the top.

Inventors did lead MB at one time.

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Zafar
94 E320 58000 Miles

zero4588,

Just a couple of comments regarding engines and other components being built abroad. Most German Auto manufacturers outsource many of their components including Mercedes, BMW and Porsche. 80% of the Porsche Boxster is outsourced and I'm pretty sure that includes the engine. BMW's are made in South Africa and US for the most part. I don't think quality has anything to do with location of manufacture, Toyota's and Hondas are both built in the US and neither show the quality issues that the German Manufacturers are displaying.

IMO German manufacturers are troubled in two areas. They're trying to introduce too many new gadgets to stay ahead of the Japanese and they aren't spending enough time testing in the real world. They're also adding these gadgets at the expense of materials of construction to keep overall product cost down. Remember as technology ages it becomes less expensive and reliable , thats why the Japanese follow along 2 - 3 years later and offer the same gadgets reliably at a lower cost......nothing new here.

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Afshin

Current:
02 C32 AMG

Previous:
92 500E
84 190E 2.3 5 Spd

Well, you got part of it right.
Marketing people are mostly responsible for vehicles.
They say: " Build us this car, for this much, oh, and throw in as many useless techno-gadgets as you can, never mind reliability, because " normal " people only keep the cars 4 - 5 years ".

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2007 C 230 Sport.

all i can say is that i love the old ones - hate the new ones.

after years of running great benzes, starting with a 220, a turboed 240d, graduating next to a 450sel, then to a 560sel in 1986, i always thought that my next benz would be a desirable improvement.

then i got my call from my dealer. went to inspect my ordered new benzes in 2000[ml500, s500]. refused them the moment i saw that damned computer screen.

that's when i adopted the viewpoint that older ones were better ones. since i loved my 560sel, i began to search for low mileage and cherry 560sec's. found one owned by a widow. a 1987, 42,000 miles. interior-exterior like new. always garaged. never driven in westchester county during winter. infrequently serviced at manhattan benz. paid a bit too much. car was a great find. everyone loves it. i prefer it to 560sl. handles better. more room. i have put 40,000 miles on it over 3 years.

very simple car. no maintenance after correcting the po's lack of use.

next i found a lovingly maintained 1979 6.9. my colors. 50,000 miles. added it to the fleet. it also appears as if newly manufactured.

then i thought a convertible would be fun. looked at 1970 280se4.5 cabs. way overpriced by 2001. then i stumbled into a virtually undriven 1995e320cab. in my colors. 4,800 miles. acquired it.

for less than the price of one of the new over-electronicised sonderklasse cars, i have 3 benzes built to the old standards. bruno sacco cars.

as i see it, as long as my mechanic lives, i shall never have to buy one of the modern monstrosities. nor deal with a dealer again. heaven.

the only mistake i may have made is that i acquired a very low mileage and very cherry 1997 s500coupe, 20,000miles. at a very good price. i am still debating the issue of keeping it. so it is stored in an temperature controlled garage until i make up my mind. like its engine. like its handling. like its quietness. but not my colors.

old benzes with low mileage in excellent shape are out there. and as long as daimler continues its policy of supplying parts for these oldsters they are the best values in motordom. but beware schremmp. as daimler-chrysler flounders financially, there is the possibility that daimler adopts chrysler attitudes and abandons all of those oldsters.

never forget, the real owner of daimler-chrysler is deutsche bank. all decisions governing this company are made by bankers.

do you have that warm and fuzzy feeling now?

Early this week on TV Speed Channel was showing the TV version of Automobile Weekly. There was a brief segment on how Mercedes quality has dropped significantly, sighting the most recent JD Power Associates rating just below Chevrolet. The reason given was primarily due to electronics and the new Mercedes command center.

Mercedes is supposedly focusing on much more thorough testing of the command center. The show also said over 2000 new E-Class cars have been bought back by Mercedes because of the command center problems. No other details were given. I don't know if this segment was new or a rerun.

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Dave

1998 E320
2001 SLK320
2000 Lexus RX300

I have been toying with the idea to install on Command into my coupe. Not easy but doable. But if the Command itself is such a problem, meaning I should not go that route? Guess I'd stick with my Alpine toys instead.

Unless there is an economic miracle (very unlikely) car sales are going to plummet soon, we are completely oversaturated with new cars.

When this happens, expect to see the fancy electronics become expensive options that no one buys -- if the choice is between a GPS in the car with Command Center (useless junk) and eating, guess what wins?

I also expect to see a large amount of the current electronics junk disappear in a while. It never works well, the software is a couple decades behind the hardware (and may never catch up) and $8000 repairs will dump the car in teh junkyard as uneconomic. Even rich idiots won't put up with that forever. Simple last longer -- the EFI in my 72 works great, and to make it feedback capable wouldn't be that hard (after all, that is what LH Jet is....). Shouldn't cost more than $500 for the complete engine control system.

When the easy money runs out and gas is $4 a gallon, expect to see more "stupid" mechanical "computers" (plain automatic trannys instead of electronic) and simple cars return.

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!

There has been some progress on the electronic front, but automakers have used any progress to overload the systems and take some steps back. Take the E34 BMW 5-series as an example. These cars were much more complex than the previous generation, and it was done with miles of wire. Huge harness that made it impossible to diagnose problems.

The "network" style of connections that most makers are using for their sophisticated models are much better, reducing the amount of wiring in the car by a significant amount. These networks have created a superior base for electonics, but then makers took advantage to pile more and more stuff in. That "piling on" meant that devices were sharing again, and diagnosis is once again more difficult.

Also, I recall not that long ago that laptop computers were relatively fragile and tempermental devices. By loading mobile environments with a greater number of processors and computers, we're just asking for trouble.

A collegue of mine has a late model Civic. Sitting in the car and looking under the hood, I'm amazed at it's simplicity compared to a new MB or BMW. Even the stereo system is simpler (though it has a CD standard, hello?) with simple controls and no robot doors that have to open and close. The HVAC controls are simple and I figured them out in about a nanosecond.

For me, the perfect car would be the terrific looks of the W203 C-Class, with a 2.7L CDI diesel for economy. Give me a top notch interior with robust materials designed to outlast the engine, which is made for a million kms. Make it as simple as the Civic, but with a few (just a few) luxury gadgets that I know work well, including heated seats. Brake by wire? Geez, wonder what the brake-computer-sensor-meter-thingy costs? Write the car off...

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

http://img31.exs.cx/img31/4050/tophat6.gif

Most of the new electronic controls replace simple mechanical "dumb servos" with "smart" electronics. As usual, the more complex, the more complex the failures, the more diffucult the diagnosis, and the more expensive the fix -- usually complete computer replacement.

I'm convinced most of this is just computer idiocy. The AC controller doesn't need to know the mixture, nor vice versa.

Networked controls are worse, not better -- and both are pretty much unnecessary.

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!

Innovation is not a bad thing, when it's executed properly. If it wasn't for innovation we wouldn't be sitting at our PC communicating to anyone in the world, would we? There are those that thought the Internet would never catch on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also concerned about the drop in Mercedes quality. However, that doesn't mean all innovation in electronics is a bad think just because Mercedes and BMW can't get it right. Just look at Lexus for a perfect example of excellent execution.

In my opinion, today's cars are far superior than those of any of the previous decades. They are more reliable, safer, and more efficient than their predecessors, regardless of manufacturer.

So far I haven't had any electronics problems on my Mercedes'. Regarding the new models, I suspect most new Mercedes' (and BMW) owners lease their vehicle or sell it in 3 years. These owners don't care about longevity, they just want their status symbol to enjoy now and if it breaks take it back and have it repaired under warranty. I have a friend that just received a new E320. It's not had a single problem. He will sell it when the warranty expires, as he always does.

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Dave

1998 E320
2001 SLK320
2000 Lexus RX300

Yes, nowaday a lot of people just lease cars and return them once the lease ends. Consequently, the sleazy, profit-oriented marketing department of some German automakers foolishly assume that this is a new trend. To keep up with the trend, they then make cars that will only last during the period of warranty. For people who purchase their cars for its used-to-be reliable quality and for daily transportation needs, they are at a disvantage buying such cars. This is very disappointing and very sad. Shame on those automakers who take advantage of us good ole honoest consumers.