I was going to give a similar reply but Paul beat me to it. For the handful or tens or even hundreds of a particular failure we read about here (such as evaporators or head gaskets) how many thousands or tens of thousands are there that never fail. We sometimes form an unrealistically pessimistic view of something simply because we read about it here many times. 124 evaporator failures do not appear to be a common problem here in Oz and I can see no good reason why things should be all that different there.

Now that winter is almost over here in Sydney, I guess I had better find out why my 190E won't hold refrigerent! I can at least report that the 300TE has only once needed a re-gas in the 6 years we've owned it. Even with a 134a retrofit it still has no problem keeping the large cabin of the wagon cool.

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107.023: 350SLC, 3-speed auto, icon gold, parchment MBtex (sold 2012 after 29 years ownership).
107.026: 500SLC, 4-speed auto, thistle green, green velour.
124.090: 300TE, 4-speed auto, arctic white, cream-beige MBtex.
201.028: 190E 2.3 Sportline, 5-speed manual, arctic white, blue leather.
201.028: 190E 2.3, 4-speed auto, blue-black, grey MBtex.
201.034: 190E 2.3-16, 5-speed manual, blue-black, black leather.