These silly comments have nothing to do with a cat converter failure nor, in fact, do they have anything to do do with automobile assembly quality, which is 99% design.

I toured the S-class production line last summer and most of the assembly is completed by robots. The few manual operations appeared to involve placing wiring harnesses and pounding in a trim strip on the roof.

The "guess" that the new O2 sensors ruined the cats is quite unlikely and they were probably failing anyway and the previous sensor diagnosis could have been erroneous or was in fact indicating a failing cat rather than a failing sensor. However, if the diagnosis is correct the fault lies with the repair rather than the design. Nevertheless at less than 80K miles/8 yrs the new ones will be free.

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Kent Christensen
Albuquerque
'07 GL320CDI, '10 CL550. '01 Porsche Boxster
Two BMW motorcycles

I was not referring to the specific case, but after much reading about S-Class quality issues and this one just fell in the that line.

Yes, it has changed over time.

My wife's 10 year old Japanese car still has none of the issue above, Cat converter and O2 sensor. Or maybe it has none of them .

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1996 E320 since 1/16/08, 171K miles as of Feb 2011

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1989 300CE - R.I.P. Dec 29 2007
Other MBs (sold): 1992 300E-24 - 1979 350SLC - 1984 230E - 1990 300CE