Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a 2003 E-Class and if so, what types of specific quality problems have you noticed thus far? I visited the Sindelfingen plant near Stuttgart, Germany last year to tour the factory. What I noticed was a surprising amount of hand assembly of the cars as they progressed down the assembly line. Of course, there was also a great deal of automotive robotics to assemble major components. Many of the components people do not normally see were plastic (the gas tanks for example, on the C class). I've always heard not to buy the first year model of any particular car because of all the tweaks that need to occur as real-world driving tests the reliability of any given model vs. the white-coat engineering of the vehicle prior to production. I wondered how this has affected the new E class? As for evidence of poor quality , I agree. For one, I hate the new E-class plastic covers on the rear of the headrests. Even Audi's are fully padded leather both front and back!