Warren,
I'm glad you brought the issue of reliability/durability here. It has been widely stated in the press that the W221 will be MB's last chance to show that it is truly the king of the auto industry after it started it over 100 years ago. Lexus and several Infinit cars actually have better resale values than MBs. Part of the reason for that is because the MBs were ultra expensive when new, and like someone else stated somewhere on this forum, no one wants to buy a mass produced 4 year old car for $90,000. The price has to be lower for such a car to be sold, so the MBs will inevitably suffer in resale value. The problem then is, why are even cheaper MBs, the E, CLK, SLK, C, etc classes having worse resale values than Lexus, Infiniti and even some Acura cars? Well, reliability my friends, reliability. When cars develop reputations for costing a whole lot to own, their resale values plunge. Heck, I'm surprised that the MBs even have the resale values they have today. They should be much lower, but they aren't thanks to that three pointed star.
If MB blows the reliability of the W221 then there may not be much else that even the old reputation can provide. So it better be as reliable as the W126 as you asked.
Regarding sales figures, I believe 700,000 W126s were sold over 15 years - 1979 to 1994 in some countries, though most countries only had new W126s for 12 years, 1979 to 1991. Only 350,000 W140s were sold in 8 years (1991 - 1999) and over 550,000 W220s have been sold to date over 6 years. More importantly, W220 warranty claims are lower than W140 claims so far and the W220 actually turned a profit on its investment in 2003 - better than the W140 which never actually made a profit. It was surprising to read that because the AIRMATIC on the W220 is very troublesome and expensive to repair and the W220 also has more pricey electronic gizmos than the W140. But that's that.
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Originally Posted by A. Rosich
Your post above is one of the main reasons I love this forum: open, sincere and respectful opinions expressed by members on interesting subjects on which they might disagree.
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I share the same sentiments. We can agree to disagree on these issues (W140 vs. W220). It has been fun and rewarding to read all your comments as you seem to be a library of W140 information.