I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this thinking about the reason MB's last longer is because they are better taken care of.

It might be true that the typical MB owner takes better care of their car. Often the original owner is well heeled enough and typically not a DIYer, so they take it to the dealer for everything.

That sad, there is much more to a car than the items that wear out due to neglect. There are zillions of items on a car that will last the same amount of time whether the oil is ever changed or not.

Face it, there are some cars that are just made better than other cars. By and large MB's are built solid and reliable. Yes, there are those achilles heels like a 124 evaporator or a 104 wiring harness, but the vast majority of subsystems and components on an MB are just superior in solidity and LONG TERM durability.

A Toyota is similar in a different way. In 166,000 miles my wifes '98 4 Runner has had two failures, the expansion valve in the a/c and the starter. That's it! How many cars go that many miles with that few problems REGARDLESS of how well they're cared for.

I have had 123 cars that are this care free, but very few cars ever built can fall in the "just change oil and drive it" category.

Another thought that I have about this is something that is hard to put into words. I guess I would call it rebuildability or repairability.

Most cars in the world are built like a dollar watch. That is, they just weren't designed to be rebuilt and when you repaired something they just wouldn't stay "fixed." This is where an MB really shines. If you drive one long enough to wear out a major component, there is enough left of the rest of the car to make it worthwhile to repair or rebuild and go on.

I've seen lots of makes, a lot of them being American and Japanese that even after being well cared for were junk when it came engine rebuild time. Every MB I've ever done major work on was really worth doing so. The bodies and chassis were still solid and rattle free. There weren't trim items broken and falling off and cosmetically they still looked great.

The Toyota does not stay looking great like an MB, but mechanically they stay solid without nuisance items breaking all the time. Except for the low quality raw materials that a Toyota is built out of, like the plastics, paints and trim, the mechanical integrity of a Toyota is very much like an MB.

IMHO,
PS Don't get me wrong. I don't consider the 166,000 miles on the 4Runner to be high mileage. LB