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I like and am in harmony with the design philosophy of MB's (up to about 1992). Everything is just right - not too much, not too little. No extra frills to distract or fail. The parts seem to have a real quality to them, right down to the electrical connectors. Many of the parts can be "renewed" - not as in thrown in the garbage, but "refreshed" and made like new. A famous example of the conservative design is the motorized passenger and manual driver side mirrors on the 560SL - I think about this every time I need to adjust the mirrors on the Taurus. How many new 560SL buyers said, $50,000 - and they can't motorize BOTH mirrors?
Another example is the complete lack of power seats on a 107SL. I have super duper power seats in my Taurus, and I have adjusted them exactly twice. In the meantime, I've been driving 100,000 miles with 10 pounds of expensive mechanisms and electrical motors that will fail either from disuse or corrosion. Really - there are some people who are outside the baseline ergonomics who need them, but most people don't. Same with tilt steering, etc.
MB's have a reputation of being expensive and/or difficult to fix. If you want to see expensive and/or difficult to fix, I'll take changing the timing chain on a 107 ANY DAY over changing the timing belt on my wife's POS PT Cruiser (recommended interval:70K). I have the manual, and I wouldn't dare even attempt it. For those who say MB parts are expensive - have you priced domestic car parts recently? Wow! And MB's of my car's era has lots of OE parts that keep prices in check.
If there is anything bad about my car, it is that it is going to be almost impossible for me to buy a post-1992 car again. That and maybe a power top as an option would have been nice. Wife #1's LeBaron, cheap as it was, had a wonderful, absolutely leak and trouble-free power top with a real headliner and heated glass - almost 15 years ago. That was a great piece of chassis engineering on an otherwise pretty bad car.
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