this may be old news for some of you and im sure websites like this exist for every car or product thats out there but its particlarly painful when people pay 70k, 80k, 100+k for a car.

almost gut wrenching.

one poor bastard had a catastrophic failure of his air suspension whil according to him cruising down the highway trying to pass a SEMI.

http://www.mercedes-benz-usa.com/index.php

so do you always get what you pay for--or pay for what you get.

Some vehicles are getting overly complicated. Being the first kid on the block with the not new bike can be very risky. I'd like to know what will happen to the long term resale value of all these high-falutin' cars (like the Prius, for example) when the real news gets out about how expensive it is to maintain all the gadgets on these cars when they get older!!

I liked it when Mercedes demonstrated three '07 S-Classes with radar-assisted braking and ran them all into each other.

Overkill. Like None Other.

Benz has always been overrated.

Friend of mine's S430 had his front suspension collapse, too. POS.

We got rid of our '05 S500 because of ALL the problems we had in 12K miles....most were smaller problems but incredibly niggling and annoying....and no place in a $91K car.

No buy-back unfortuantely because we had numerous problems but never multiple reoccurances of the same problem....

On the flip side, the '05 X5 we had with 14K miles was perfect....no problems in the slightest.

So we traded the Benz and the '05 X5 in and got an '06 X5 4.4i the same color and equipment as the '05.

A partial list of the Benz's problems.......the battery experiencing a failed battery core....the power fold-in mirrors intermittenly not folding back out when we started the car....the nav screen sliding up (to put in CD) then not sliding back down into place.....the info system showing a bad rear turn signal, even though it was working fine.....WAY abnormal wear on the right rear tire (way abnormal compared to the other three tires) suggesting some sort of suspension misalignment or problem.....

And that was only a partial list in 12K miles......

'05 S500...a $91K car. 

A partial list of the Benz's problems.......the battery experiencing a failed battery core....the power fold-in mirrors intermittenly not folding back out when we started the car....the nav screen sliding up (to put in CD) then not sliding back down into place.....the info system showing a bad rear turn signal, even though it was working fine.....WAY abnormal wear on the right rear tire (way abnormal compared to the other three tires) suggesting some sort of suspension misalignment or problem.....

And that was only a partial list in 12K miles......

Let's compare to one of these cheesy American luxury cars with "too many gee-whiz gadgets that are bound be a repair nightmare" (-Edmunds.com).

Hmmm...

Thinking...

Absolutely no electrical failures in six years of ownership of a Bonneville, again one of these chintzy Yank cars that fall apart. 107k miles, too. Oh, and it cost one-third of the S500. Of course, its a Pontiac, so its about 1/11th the car. And yet no issues.

The respect Mercedes has was certainly earned over the years. No doubt the classics and oldies are excellent cars - elegant, strong, powerful, many of them timeless in quality and design. However, the technology bug bit them in the past few decades and bit them hard. Too many gizmos, too many systems that not only can but often do fail for utterly no reason. Compare to Cadillac. Caddies have always been laden with electronics and many times they do fail, yet their reliability is superior to Mercedes and the cost of the parts (and cars) aren't that expensive in realtion. Add to that the fact that MBs have become bland, blase, part of the background and yet the pricetags keep climbing. Who wants to pay $50,000-100,000 for an uninspired bankruptcy-from-repair-bills waiting to happen?

There's a reason Mercedes dropped their free maintenance program. They probably wouldn't be making 15 lines of cars and SUV 'things' if they had to keep fixing them.

But...the new S-Class is flawless. It's "perfect". Edmunds told me so.

But...the new S-Class is flawless. It's "perfect". Edmunds told me so.

....and you know what? Our S500 wasn't even that special to drive or ride in.

Sure it DID drive well, was quiet, and rode nicely.....but so do many other cars for a lot less money.

I'll put it this way.....we are WAY more enthusiastic about the X5 in comparison because the X5 does it's intended job (sport-sedan like SUV) with alot more success than the S500 does IT'S job (full-size luxury ride.)

The X5 truly is like driving a BMW 5-series sport sedan on stilts. AND the 4.4L V8 engine and 6-speed automatic seem perfectly tuned together. The thing even has a domestic-V8-like exhaust burble. It's just a neat vehicle....and we both have commented that for $30K-some-odd less than the Benz, we each WAY enjoyed driving the X5 ANY time over the S500.