Peter, you're a rare breed. Most of us are used car buyers. It's also rare to find a surgeon who wrenches.

I could write volumes on the subject of quality and what has happened to the auto industry. The reasons you see little written on maintenance in the owners manual is that cars like the E550 have gotten so complex that the average person has little interest in having a hand in maintenance, nor does the manufacturer (for various reasons) want the average person working on thier cars.

On the subject of quality, the parts on a car are built much more consistently than in the past. Unfortunately, the modern automobile has more parts on it than ever before. And this goes double for Mercedes, which believes in loading the car with all kinds of gizmos. This added complexity of parts offsets anything we've gained with the consistency of parts.

Another factor is that nowadays parts are being manufactured at the "fine edge" of just being able to perform, to get the job done, and no more. Robustness has gone out the door. Ever since the 60s we've seen robustness designed out of an automobile. I work in automotive manufacturing and rub elbows with automotive engineers on a daily basis. They all say the same thing, that they are squeezed by the auto manufacturers to get the part price down. The auto manufacturers even jump in and show you where you can take robustness (and quality) out of a part.

MB is no different. Ever since Lexus became a contender of luxury imports, MB has been looking to get their manufacturing costs down to stay competitive. Regardless of what they've recently announced, they will never solve the quality issues beyond what they have already been doing. Their announcement was nothing more than palaver to appease the masses worried about MB quality going downhill. They will continue to manufacture cars with the same poor quality as they can get away with. After all, the competition isn't that much better. So don't expect to see any improvements soon.

The other side of the coin is that the average car buyer wants (and expects) all the frills and gizmos that he feels entitled to in a luxury car. And he wants to pay little for it. So I blame much of this quality issue on the consumer. They get what they demand. Nobody walks into a dealer to appraise a car on the ease of repair.

If I was to start the Kestas Motor Manufacturing Co., and build quality cars with little more than the simple "luxury" amenities and ease of repair found in your 1970s automobile, it would fall flat on it back, because nobody wants such a car. Just do some "market research" and ask your friends what they look for in a new car. Their answers tell all... A/C, auto, ps, pb, and AM/FM/CD just doesn't cut it anymore with the average new car buyer.

I remember twenty years ago my colleagues told me that Mercedes was headed in a direction that they now have with their quality. They said that if they put their design and development efforts into increasing the quality of each existing component instead of adding new parts on a car, they'd have one heck of a grand automobile.

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95 E320 Cabriolet, 169K