I have had my 190E (85, 122K) for exactly 5 years, and have spent a whopping 12.7K on repairs in these 5 years (everything, including transmission, has given up). I got this car for free, so I keep it and maintain it - no way should ANY car, let alone a mercedes, literally disintegrate at 80K miles (that's the mileage when I got the car). And I can easily see spending about 2K in the next 6 months, on some pending jobs!

My opinion - mercs older than 5-6 years should only be owned who can do many of the small repair jobs (at least) themselves. If you need a mechanic for every damn thing, these are BAD vehicles to keep - Toyotas are much more reliable, and I say this after having closely observerd three Camry's with over 250K each. The so called German engineering comes at a steep price tag!