Not hostile, just didn't like the perceived insult.

My car was as I said an exceptional mechanical example, and the PO took it out of a 15-year sleep and spent loads of money (10s of thousands of dollars according to the bills that I have) to get it to the condition that I enjoyed it in. So the work was done, just by the PO, and I got 100% of the benefit of the work.

To date, my E500 has been in the shop only one time, for its 75,000 mile service. Other than that, in 18+ months, it has never seen the shop and has no need to now (well, it does have a broken exhaust hanger, but I can probably fix that myself).

There is no question that the 500 is more reliable. Any mechanic or shopowner will confirm that.

I don't mean to be down on the cars, it's just a few things:

a) I've met and I've seen far too many people get in over their heads on these cars, and it's the cars that often suffer
b) I have a somewhat cynical sense of humor when it comes to these things
c) I will always continue to do my best to help anyone and answer anyone's questions about these cars. But I will be blunt about it if I sense that someone doesn't know what they're getting into
d) I had my phase of the older cars, and enjoyed them; now I'm in a phase of the newer classics, and enjoying the unique benefits that they bring to the table. I still appreciate the older classics (Heaven knows I'll be spending three days driving a 280SL around the Dolomite mountains in Italy/Austria/Switzerland at the end of June) and will likely own all of the M-100 cars later in my life; I just can't deal with the current M-100 environment given the people running the club.

Cheers,
Gerry