Originally Posted by inetd

The war dept. would shoot me if she read this as it's her car, but IMHO Lexus does not have near the build quality of a Merc. Not even close. For ex, if Merc used a 1/2" something-or-another, Lexus would copy it and make it a 1/4" something-or-another. The whole car is like that - thinner, cheaper (is that the right adjective?), just minimal. Everything is minimal.

The "I had to fix my Merc so now I'm mad at the world" crowd quickly dumps Mercs (to our delight), and jumps over to a Lexus so they can neglect that one too. I'm approached weekly by an ex-Merc owner with all sorts of stories of why they switched to Lexus. Like how they had to replace air pumps or something on their Merc, cussed out the dealer and traded it on a Lexus. One guy boasted he lost $15k on the trade in value of his Merc because he had to replace both the rotors AND the pads during a brake job, which he deemed inexcusable. With a Lexus he claimed, he only had to do pads. Infuriated, he made the trade. He was actually quite angry that I was successfully driving a Merc, especially when I reminded him he just did a $15,000.00 brake job. Boy was he pissed.

But you're right - I do NOT like to drive the Lexus, and now the wife always wants the Merc too. Just a few drives and she was converted. Calls it the "power sled"...