You might want to do some research on that statement. My 1999 car is pretty much the same car that was designed in 1992 with all the bugs worked out of it. I used to have a similar view of post 1996 cars until I did some research. There are many cars that were designed before Mercedes quality started to decline. The 129 chassis SL is another example built from 1990-2002. Additionally cars built after 1995 don't have the wiring harness problems that seem to plague many of the cars built in the mid 1990's. If you do some reading on the 140 its known as one of the highest build quality Mercedes cars ever produced.

I think a lot of the problems that the newer cars suffer from are design flaws rather than assembly or parts quality problems. The world is demanding faster cheaper and better and the Germans are getting a lot of competition from the Japanese "luxury" cars. Many consumers would rather pay 60K for a Lexus LS430 than 100K for a Mercedes S class. Some people don't know enough about cars to recognize the difference. Sort of like the people who would be happy with Cubic Zirconians rather than real Diamonds. Its really easy for the Japanese to copy the ideas that the Germans spent real R&D money to produce and produce a second rate copy for a lot less.