All there made out to be?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
We've had
A150 for 3-yrs, totally fault free;

SLK 200 (R171) for 7-yrs, headlamp bulb failure after 6-months otherwise fault free;

C220 AMG Coupe (C204) for 18-months, gear selector randomly stuck in P from new, dealer tried to fix, but in the end judiciously applied WD40 by yours truly sorted that. Fire Opal paint started to micro blister last year and ended up on every panel. Rather than wait for respray, traded that for;

C250 AMG Estate (S205) for four weeks, been perfect so far.
 
My experience if BMW is that they are more reliable. Whereas I've had a number of MB's that have needed expensive components replacing. Heck our Range Rover has been better behaved.

While I really do not expect any car to be perfectly reliable I do expect a premium marque to get it sorted smoothly and seamlessly.
 
In my experience it's luck of the draw with any brand.

Believe it or not I've had 9 Renaults and never had a problem with them. Maybe a couple of little niggles but nothing to knock your faith in the car!

Least reliable car and checkered repair history was a VW! My mum has an A1 with just over 20k on the clock it's 4-5 years old and has been faultless.

My E320 W211 continues to impress me though. Will be 14 years old this year, has 113k on the clock and counting yet it starts and drives perfectly. Had it nearly a year and all it's needed is a new battery and tyres.

My CLS hasn't had the most strenuous life but as I see it, it's a solid as my E.

So my experience of Mercedes is entirely positive so far. My other half has an SL350 which has had a couple of repairs but she would like another Merc to replace it in future.
 
All of my Mercs have done big mileages and been very reliable.

The only real issues with my current W212 have been coolant leaks. The first was a gasket on the fuel pump housing I think which Merc said was water cooled,and the second was the water pump but it had done 220k miles before it needed replacing.

They will want it for the day to pressure test the system.
 
We'll I'm on my first MB, (S213) one month old nearly now.

So far so good, but I have moved over from Audi which I have driven since 1990. I started with the old Audi 100 before they changed them to the A6 and can honestly say as far as reliability goes they were nearly bullet proof.

I usually had the cars for between 3 and 4 years each and did anything from 80k to 100k in them over that time.

I hope I haven't made a mistake in taking the plunge:rolleyes:
 
I don't expect a Mercedes to be any more reliable than any other car.

I might expect more comfort, performance, better soundproofing or some such.

Some people have high expectations and then feel upset when they are not met, it reminds me a bit of the posts on here where people are grizzling about some perceived lack of respect from MB sales guys.
 
Any car will break at some point and with the increase of gizmos and new technologies installed, probability of failure gets bigger.
There will always be occasional failures of some systems due to wear and tear and I’ve always measured the reliability of any mechanical product by recurrence of failures of the same part/system. This can be due to poor design by manufacturer, lack of skills of service technician doing the repair, or poor and inadequate usage by the driver.
The only one we can’t influence is the manufacturers design, other two can be easily sorted out.
The most unreliable car I’ve ever had was Audi A6 because of bad design by the manufacturer.
So far, the best cars were Mercs.
 
I don't know what "there [sic] made out to be" is supposed to mean, who's making them out to be what?

You've had some bad luck with the brand, that's all. It's not indicative of general build quality across the marque's entire range.


rather then been clever

:D Brilliant.
 
Don't buy a Jaguar then ... couldn't wait to get rid of mine, spent more time at the useless dealers than on my driveway !

My 2017 C220d 4matic is sublime right now, looks great, super comfy, very happy.

It does depend on how good your dealer is, I don't mind the odd niggle as long as it gets prompt and professional support when needed. Selling cars is easy, the tricky bit is keeping customers happy afterwards ... or we don't come back.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
I'm sure your 2017 car is sublime...its no older than 4 months !! I hope its as solid as my 2006 C55 in 11 years time with 124000 on the clock.

Let us know when you reach that milestone. I have spoken to a few owners of newer 'lesser' model MB's who are far from impressed with their purchase.

Probably the same on forums for other marques. Everything mass produced is built to a 'price'
 
We are on our 2nd Nissan, 1st Qashqai the Tailgate was welded on wrong believe it or not! sqeaky heater blower at 5k, and Radio would be random dropping in and out.

2nd A New X-trail top of the Range, Its been back 3 times to try and sort a miss fire out, and other Various electrical issues.
Had a brand new Quashi as a rental car in Denmark recently. I was explain to my Danish colleagues what a fine piece of British built Japtech it was when the gear lever came off in my hand !!

Oh , how the chuckled to themselves (they don't laugh much) , but they did laugh when the guy from Avis told me this was not the first one he had seen with this problem.
They were OK with me when I reminded them they don't make cars over their and their wind generators are only viable because of government grants and tax breaks !
 
Grow up. My reply was valid. You said BMW and Audi were better than Merc...in your experience. So what... it isn't as though BMW an Audi will have the same problems.

Like I said, I never said Audi or BMW was problem proof
 
Last edited:
This wasn't a discussion about how many warranty repairs other manufacturers have, it was a question of whether Mercedes was all it makes out to be..

You're using your personal experience of 4 cars to raise the question. Had you had no problems with the 2 mercs, but had problems with the 1 year old audi, or 6 month old bmw, one assumes you would be questioning the other brand instead.

Your sample is far too small on which to make any judgement.

And on your original question specifically "Is the Mercedes brand all its made out to be?", that question requires us to know what you think the brand is made out to be, and given your question goes on to cite your personal ownership of Audi and BMW in better terms, I assume you mean in comparision to what you think the BMW and Audi brands are made out to be.

And if you ask a Merc forum a question of comparing Merc with BMW and Audi, it'll hardly come as a surprise that the replies will generally schew in favour of Merc, as it would for BMW on a BMW forum etc.
 
Last edited:
I would imagine reliability depends more on the model than brand. A bog standard petrol C-Class offers a lot less potential to go **** up than a ferociously complex diesel ML.
 
Its a numbers game. Bentley Built 10000 units last year, if I remember rightly, and if there was a acceptance that there would be for arguments sake a 10% warranty claim. Then there would be 1000 claims made and from the recent press statement from mercedes (https://www.daimler.com/documents/i...tmeldungen/daimler-ir-release-en-20160108.pdf) a total of 1,871,511 cars were made in 2015 and if by the same yardstick that 10% equals 18715 claims. But we have come a long way way since the days of the Dagenham dustbin and the "Monday and Friday cars"
 
I think we all need to remember that mainstream cars are now built to a Budget and not a Standard and therefore it's really the luck of the draw in the end. Having said that this probably doesn't apply at the other end of the market eg. RR etc...
 
Last edited:
In my experience it's luck of the draw with any brand.

Believe it or not I've had 9 Renaults and never had a problem with them. Maybe a couple of little niggles but nothing to knock your faith in the car!...

Ha ha, wife had a 2005 Scenic II and the digital dash stopped working on rainy days (or after washing the car), the driver-side electric window worked only sometimes, one of the door handles did not work with keyless ignition, and the electric power steering kept failing (cost if replacing with new £1,800). So after having it for 5 years, we got rid of it... and got very little for it too.
 
Nothing that can't be fixed with a can of expanding foam and a squirt of silicone sealant.


Those sort of solutions only work on a leaky roof along with some code 4 lead. :p
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom