CMCon98:
My experience has been that the MB is
NOT a bigger moneypit than any other older mass produced car. I own both an '87 300E and an '88 Acura Legend Coupe. The MB was my father's car, and received sub standard service until I acquired it 2 years ago. My Legend received religious service including garaging every night in SoCal, 6 month waxing, Mobile 1 at 3 k intervals, and all service performed on schedule or early.
My experience (and that of 2 friends/acquaintances with this vintage Acura) has been that the Acura started disintegrating while still under warranty, that plastic parts, electronic circuit boards, switches, wiring, and mechanical components have been of marginal quality and break frequently, and that the parts are more usually more expensive than an MB ($1000 for just an AC compressor, $200+ for a power window switch.) Also, the car has design flaws such as an instrument cluster circuit board that rubs on the dash inner structure and shorts out, Door hinges on the 2 door Coupe taken from the 4 door (to save money) that allow the doors to sag and rattle, Seat belt fasteners that fail, so much weight on the front wheels that it eats brakes and CV joints, etc. ad infinitum. Go to the Technical service bulletin list at
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/tsb/servicemmy1.cfm and enter the 2 cars for comparison. The Acura has 100 TSBs, the MB has 15, 3 of which were not on the gas model, but applied only to the diesel.
My MB and my Toyota Celica are pretty comparable in reliability and expense to operate, at least to this point. The Acura, however, has duplicated all the problems I had with my previous Honda product, a Civic. There will be good and bad examples of each model out there, but my MB, despite 10 years of mechanical near-neglect, is a better, safer, and higher quality vehicle than my perfectly maintained Acura (And, I suspect, a better quality car than the new Cadillac I considered in 1988 but walked away from after the door handle came off in my hand when I tried to open the door at the dealers lot!). Nothing lasts forever, but I will be really sad when "Leise" needs to be retired a couple of hundred thousand miles from now. Cheers!
