Tough question. There are a lot of variables. For example a person treats a toyota or honda a lot differently than they do a BMW, Porsche, or Mercedes. If I had to pick a top car as far as durability goes, it would be tough, based on the following examples:
- My sister had an early 80's Honda Civic hatchback, you know the silver one that was everywhere. She bought it with 170,000 miles on it, drove it until it had 260,000 on it, and didn't put one dime into the car except for fuel and oil changes. She then sold it for $200 less than she paid for it 8 years later.
- My company has a 1993 Ford F350 4x4 CrewCab Longbed that we use for hauling feed and horses around. It just turned over 194,000 miles, many of them hard ones.
- I had a friend who had a Toyota truck, the little one, 2wd, and he had 340,000 miles on it when he sold it.
- My own CJ7 Limited, that I bought 5 years ago with 160,000 miles on it, now has 201,000 miles on it and goes strong. Everything still works - including the air conditioning and I use it hard - on trails, dragging pastures, etc..
I think that any car is only as good the maintenance it gets, German, Japanese, whatever. MB's are usually very well maintained, but that does not mean they are inherently better. We have all seen the ones that weren't maintained, and they look just like the other makes that have not been maintained. Not to mention, it's not really fair to compare a $15,000 Japanese car to a $50,000 German car. Speaking of maintenance, my 300CD is going in Monday for its 120,000 mile service. Not once has its regularly scheduled maintenance been skipped - not once in its history - and it shows. I think a fair comparison would be a $/mile, including the purchase price, but even that's open to more variables. Tough question to answer...