My uncle had a very nice 1991 Mercedes 300te. The car developed a transmission problem and they traded it off. They traded it for a 2003 Mazda 3 I think. They did this because they did not wan't to spend the $3000 that they were quoted to fix the benz. While that might have been a large precentage of the acutal blue book value of the car, it seems that it would have made more since to fix it, since the the head was already done a few years ago. Not to mention, if one really wanted to be cheap, probably similar to me, you could just go to the junk yard and buy another transmission for $200.

This seems very simple to me, one could just spend less and fix the old benz, and drive a better car. Also, I noticed that a lot of well of people in my town seem to continue to drive their old Benzes, Volvos and BMWs and this makes since, buy a car that you like maintain it and drive it for 10- 20 years. To me this is what makes owning one of our cars pencil out, is that they old up twice as long as other cars such as a taurus and such. The japanese cars are good cars, but they are not as safe as ours.