My 99 issues were solved during warranty. Not had any real problems with mine. I suppose owners of '00 models and up have heard the horror stories of the 98 and 99 models (which are probably 5% of the total 98/99 ML ownership experiences) and have concluded that it's best to stay away from them.

Not so. But I will add, that early model-year runs always have growing pains, and that it's typically best to target model years that have had a chance to work the bugs out.

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car