Went to a private school here in the Metropex with my wife to take some pictures. My wife does pen and ink sketches of buildings and homes.
A Maybach 62 pulled up and the owner got out, he was driving it.
Is the quality of the Maybach getting just as bad as Mercedes. When he pulled into his parking spot the rear brakes squealed pretty badly. So he has a $357,000 car that is less than 1 year old and the brakes squeal.
Mercedes is really having some problems.

I read the MBCA magazine article that interviewed the VP of cutomer service, (IIRC) about quality and how they are very focused on improving it. To me the article just reaked of an upper manager who is completely out of touch with what is happening in the dealers, and to the customers. And this is why Mercedes has dropped in the JD Powers and Consumers Reports ratings. They spend to much time in their ivory towers and not enough in the trenches, alot like the Airlines.

Dave

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1970 220D, owned 1980-1990
1980 240D, owned 1990-1992
1982 300TD, owned 1992-1993
1986 300SDL, owned 1993-2004
1999 E300, owned 1999-2003
1982 300TD, 213,880mi, owned since Nov 18, 1991- Aug 4, 2010 SOLD
1988 560SL, 100,000mi, owned since 1995
1965 Mustang Fastback Mileage Unknown(My sons)
1983 240D, 176,000mi (My daughers) owned since 2004
2007 Honda Accord EX-L I4 auto, the new daily driver
1985 300D 264,000mi Son's new daily driver.(sold)
2008 Hyundai Tiberon. Daughters new car

From what I have been reading its not so much the cars that are problems, but the dealers don't fix them, or can't or make something worse. Good and competent dealers that fix a problem would make this whole thing go away. Somebody has a problem that keeps coming back, its likely not the car or the build, but an improper fix.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

You're kidding! Quality problems? It's an MB you know, MB has no quality problems!

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

Oh my God!!! An ultra high performance braking system on a vehicle was......squeaking!!! The world has come to an end!

Brakes squeak. Especially higher performing systems on modern cars. Not all, but most do. As a MB service consultant, I get this from almost every customer anytime it is cold, wet, when there is excessive brake dust on the wheels/brakes. This is a normal occurence. There are a few factors that go into the composition of brake pad compound. They can either perform well, be quiet or have minimal amounts of dust. There is a trade off for whatever traits the engineers find most valuable. The Maybach 62 stops better than most sports cars out there while carrying a massive amount of weight. Physics are still physics, no matter how much the car costs. Big cars needs lot of braking power to stop quickly, and oftentimes a bit of noise is part of the equation.

Sorry if I sound a bit harsh. I hear this all day every day and it has become a rather sore subject. They are designed to stop, not to be silent. Now, MB cars have gone downhill in overall quality, this is no secret. They have gotten a bit better in the past two years, and hopefully this trend continues. Rant over.

I know this is probably a sore spot with you, But, I have owned 8 Mercedes over the last 24 years and they don't squeak IF properly repaired. None of my Mercedes squeak. The 300TD did once, and I quickly fixed that, I forgot the anti-squeal paste. None of my Acura cars squeaked and neither has my freinds Porshe, Maserati or Pantera.

Dave

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1970 220D, owned 1980-1990
1980 240D, owned 1990-1992
1982 300TD, owned 1992-1993
1986 300SDL, owned 1993-2004
1999 E300, owned 1999-2003
1982 300TD, 213,880mi, owned since Nov 18, 1991- Aug 4, 2010 SOLD
1988 560SL, 100,000mi, owned since 1995
1965 Mustang Fastback Mileage Unknown(My sons)
1983 240D, 176,000mi (My daughers) owned since 2004
2007 Honda Accord EX-L I4 auto, the new daily driver
1985 300D 264,000mi Son's new daily driver.(sold)
2008 Hyundai Tiberon. Daughters new car

My W126's rear brakes squeak a bit. I have new ATE's with Textar pads. I even used the offical MB paste. Sometimes brake just make noise.

From what I have read of the Maybach owners seem to think it is one of the best cars ever made. I have never ridden in one but I have looked at a 57 up close. The interior puts the S class to shame.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

So true! Metallic brakes squeak...get a grip. It doesn't make the car a POS. However, Mercedes quality has slipped in relation to its competitors. Hopefully they will get their act together. The service depts are surely a sore spot in the perceived quality dept. Even if Mercedes' quality goes up, the crappy dealer service will still bring them down.

Good point, but it may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue: the dealer service may suck because of the lower-quality/reliability of newer MB's. Judging by the sheer # of cars in for service at MB Laguna Niguel and Fletcher Jones in Costa Mesa, I'd say the dealer tech's are swamped. even though it's not an excuse, it's hard to get great service when there are huge lines of cars coming in.

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1990 190e 2.6 - The only one I can really call "My Car".

1987 190e 2.3 - The donor car's up and running, only mods are Euros and a Sony headunit. My Dad's runabout now.

1990 300e 2.6 - The parents' ride.

OK, I want to chime in here. MB quality has gone downhill in a lot of cases. This is established. You will not get any arguements from me. There are a few improvements. The '05 ML's are now built like tanks. What was once literally the worst SUV on the road is now truly one of the best. Build quality and reliability are way up. Just in time to introduce a new model with new gizmo that will probably suck as bad as the 98's did.

But I digress. There is a lot of dealer service bashing based on percieved inability of the service personnel to fix cars. This is simply not the case (well, a lot of the time). Most techs that make to into a MB facility are the upper echelon in their profession. They have to go to tons of school, need major amounts of computer knowledge and are generally respinsible for retaining an exponentiallly higher amount of data than techs for competing brands.

A major part of the problem lies in MB's warranty times and procedures. The times have gotten cut to the bare bones. Getting MB to pay for essential operations such as road tests and in depth electrical testing is a huige challenge. My techs get paid for only what they do. MB gives a labor operation and a certain amount of time for them to do it. Hypothetically, lets say you've got a warning light on. MB will pay, let's say, .5 hrs for the tech to diagnose this. In that time, my tech has to go out to the lot, find the car, pull it in, put it up on a rack, hook up the diagnostic equiptment, run the codes and observe a few values that the sensors are putting out. This is nearly impossible in and of itself. Now the computer shows a fault for a component. This may mean a few things. Most likely, that component is bad. But it could be wiring related. It could be a faulty signal from another sensor that falsely points to this component. It may be low battery voltage. There are a myriad of possible causes. Now, MB just wants to see the printout of the faults and values to justify the replacement of the part. These policies, as well as the lack of adequate diagnostic time has created a culture of parts changers. This is unfortunate, as they are all capable of the in depth diagnosis to hit the nail on the head, but no one will pay them for it. Techs are not going to work for two hours to properly diagnose a problem for free when other work is waiting and MB will pay them anyways. So the biggest complaint in the auto industry now comes to light. "It was not fixed right the first time". And if it was, it was a fluke, as the proper procedure could not have been followed without superhuman speed and powers of deduction. We in the business are no happier about any of this than the customers. It is hard to take pride in a job that you are doing half-assed because you need to to survive. Techs are making less and less money every year as it is. I spend my days making excuses to customers about why their more expensive MB breaks down ten times as much as their Lexus/Infinity.

But wait, there's more. Now say we get one of these problem car (whose frequency is becoming more and more alarming). All the common fixes don't seem to help. The codes don't point to much. MB has simply not made an adequate level of technical resources available to the techs to get to the bottom of strange electrical "gremlins". We can't simply turn a customer away and say, "sorry, we can't fix it". It goes against the dealer charter. So oftentimes my techs are left to hunt around in the dark for answers that MB does not have, and in essence, work as cheap field engineers. MB's technical assistance center is sometimes as clueless as we are about strange problems. Then they start to occur more and more. Then the bullitens start coming. "If you have symptom X with component Y, do not replace component Y, or you will be debited. There is no repair at this time. Please wait for further updates". Which can take weeks, even months. Meanwhile, Joe ******* over here in his brand new $80K base model show off to the neighbors S Class has to drive around with Nav or a functioning radio. We could put in another and it would work. Maybe not forever, but it would make the customer happy. They all get rebuilt in the end anyways. But no help, just more bad blood spilled onto me, the front line of defense.

Sorry to rant here, but it's too easy to just blame the dealers as oftentimes it's not their fault. There are problems higher up that are not being addressed. I love MB cars, have owned many, many of them iver the years. They were at one time the best vehicle hands down that could be purchased at any price. I want to see those days again. If you're still reading, thanks for listening. Vented a little frustration there....

PHAEDRUS242, that's the best explanation of a business-run automobile company I've read yet. It makes perfect sense to charge every minute because they all add up in the end.

Back in the good ol' days a serviceman would write off a certain percentage of the time needed to get to the 'real' stage of the repair. Nowdays the 5 minutes needed to put the car on the hoist is a real cost when multiplied dozens of times a day in a big dealership.

Too bad we look at the world with non-business eyes. I can't count the number of times someone has complained about the cost of a cup of coffee in a restaurant--they simply don't realize the true costs of providing staff and premises that go to make up the real-world total.

Ken Silver
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~1993 SL500, glistening triple black, xenons, AMG facelift to 2002 style.
~1999 SLK 230 Kompressor, silver/black leather, CD, immaculate
~1999 Lexus LX470, sand/ivory leather.
~1999 Suzuki Grand Vitara. black & silver.
~ex 350SL, 230E, 280E, MX5, Jaguar Daimler and a lot of other makes not nearly as nice.

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http://www.kensilver.com/newSLsig.jpg

With all due respect guys, you don't run your businesses. Your customers do. It's what customers are willing pay, not how much it costs you. Customers don't care how much it costs you to brew that pot of coffee or what your brand new renovation cost you. All they know is if they can't get it for a price here that they'll get it somewhere else. Adjust!

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman