End of term report - 2015 ML63 with performance pack

[Steveml63]

Hi,
Though that I would give people looking to purchase an ML3 the benefit of our costs of ownership from new in May 2015 until early January - a total of 44 months and 108,000 km of ownership
The car cost us equivalent of £83,000 new and we sold it for £26,000.
Depreciation was therefore £57,000 or £1295.45 per month.

Insurance for the whole 4 years (fully comp) was £6279.60 or £142.72 per month

Fuel averaged 16.3l/100km (17.3 UK mpg) - so we used an incredible 17,740 litres which cost us £7096.17 or £161 per month. Luckily fuel is a bit cheaper here than the UK!

Servicing every 15,000 km at the Mercedes dealer cost a total of £5160 or £117.28 per month

Tyres - we bought a total of 12 new tyres at a cost of £2630 or £59.77 per month.

Brakes - the car ate a lot of brake pads and discs! We sourced these from an authorised spares supplier and had them fitted at a German car specialist - otherwise costs would have been at least triple these if we had it done at the Mercedes dealer and did not get the discs skimmed.
Total cost was £2888 or £65.75 per month.

Last cost was for new airmatic strut and parts on front offside at the beginning of the year. After discount this cost £1920 or £43.64 per month.

It was the failure of the air suspension and the refusal to cover it under warranty that led us to sell the car - fearing that the other three corners might also fail!

Cheers
Steve

 

[Deleted member 6183]

£1886 per month to run a car?

I'd be furious.

Assume that you paid cash so there is no interest to add in?

 

[clk320x]

Depreciation was therefore £57,000

 

[flowrider]

Hi,
Though that I would give people looking to purchase an ML3 the benefit of our costs of ownership from new in May 2015 until early January - a total of 44 months and 108,000 km of ownership
The car cost us equivalent of £83,000 new and we sold it for £26,000.
Depreciation was therefore £57,000 or £1295.45 per month.

Insurance for the whole 4 years (fully comp) was £6279.60 or £142.72 per month

Fuel averaged 16.3l/100km (17.3 UK mpg) - so we used an incredible 17,740 litres which cost us £7096.17 or £161 per month. Luckily fuel is a bit cheaper here than the UK!

Servicing every 15,000 km at the Mercedes dealer cost a total of £5160 or £117.28 per month

Tyres - we bought a total of 12 new tyres at a cost of £2630 or £59.77 per month.

Brakes - the car ate a lot of brake pads and discs! We sourced these from an authorised spares supplier and had them fitted at a German car specialist - otherwise costs would have been at least triple these if we had it done at the Mercedes dealer and did not get the discs skimmed.
Total cost was £2888 or £65.75 per month.

Last cost was for new airmatic strut and parts on front offside at the beginning of the year. After discount this cost £1920 or £43.64 per month.

It was the failure of the air suspension and the refusal to cover it under warranty that led us to sell the car - fearing that the other three corners might also fail!

Cheers
Steve

Wow, don't think I'll be getting am ML63 anytime soon! Interesting breakdown thanks.

 

[Smart320]

Thanks for that interesting information. Probably explains why I have just sold my ML ( economy 350 Sport version ) and replaced it with a A210 Evolution that cost me the same as one months running cost for your ML63. Mind you am not certain why I am now also perusing the used car advertisements for an additional big engined automatic ( V8 ? )

 

[AMGeed]

Absolutely frightening depreciation and running costs Steve, but if you can afford it, no problem.

It just reinforces my opinion that buying a brand new car is for the wealthy only, and peasants like myself are far better buying after 3 -4 years and the massive depreciation has been lost by the previous owner. Its the only way I can justify buying an E63s biturbo to myself.

 

[Will]

I always find it interesting how people perceive the running costs of cars.

No disrespect to the OP but for the last 3/4 years it’s been depreciating almost £1300/month, every month, but one repair cost of £1900 sees it away and sold/traded in where it is much closer to the bottom of the depreciation curve.

In other words it’s probably only going to lose £500/month now, you could afford to replace every single Airmatic strut over the next few months if and when they failed.

But if you’re in a position to spend that amount on a new car, why not. Someone has to otherwise there’d be no used AMGs for us mere mortals to enjoy

 

[Steveml63]

Absolutely frightening depreciation and running costs Steve, but if you can afford it, no problem.

It just reinforces my opinion that buying a brand new car is for the wealthy only, and peasants like myself are far better buying after 3 -4 years and the massive depreciation has been lost by the previous owner. Its the only way I can justify buying an E63s biturbo to myself.

Hi,
The running costs are higher than you imagine when you finally add them up.
We could never afford the petrol alone on this type of car in the UK - with the mileage we do (school run is 200km per day!)
We expected the petrol and servicing costs, to some extent.
But the brakes, tyres and non-warranty repairs were an unpleasant surprise.
The car was immaculate when we sold it - but I would never want to be the next owner of this type of car - as you never know what could go wrong next and the parts costs are so high.
The car we replaced it with is a BMW X3M40i - which has much more technology, virtually the same performance, 50% better fuel consumption and most importantly an 8 year/160,000km service and repair contract (this covers everything including replacement brake pads, discs etc. - so we should only need to pay for fuel, tyres and insurance)
Cheers
Steve

 

[Steveml63]

I always find it interesting how people perceive the running costs of cars.

No disrespect to the OP but for the last 3/4 years it’s been depreciating almost £1300/month, every month, but one repair cost of £1900 sees it away and sold/traded in where it is much closer to the bottom of the depreciation curve.

In other words it’s probably only going to lose £500/month now, you could afford to replace every single Airmatic strut over the next few months if and when they failed.

But if you’re in a position to spend that amount on a new car, why not. Someone has to otherwise there’d be no used AMGs for us mere mortals to enjoy

We replaced it out of spite to the Mercedes dealer who we fell out with over the non-warranty coverage.
We just could not trust them on any future failures!
We were also a bit bored with it after this amount of time and should have really sold it when it was about 2 1/2 years old and less than 100,000km on the clock.

 

[AMV]

Wouldnt expect the strut to fail that early on....

I guess they have lost you as a customer..

 

[Will]

I hate to sound boring but the dealer won’t care if you go off to BMW, yes it’d be nice to have some goodwill on warranty claims etc but sometimes you have to draw the line and look at the bigger picture. I wouldn’t have been best pleased either at having to fork out £1900 on a repair out of warranty but to be fair it’s par for the course on cars like these, especially well used (100,000km) end in hot climates (Dubai?)

Never nice having to pay out at the time but averaged out over the ownership period?

At least you got some decent useage/mileage out of the ML. My E63 although 4 years older had only covered 11k miles when I bought it last year and that had cost and lost pretty much the same amounts in depreciation as yours. In other words about £61k/11k miles or just over £5/mile (£5000 per 1000 miles puts it into perspective best for me!)

Funny enough even with that mileage it’s still had a couple of expensive repairs in the last year - a new headlight (ILS type) was over £1k and both rear air springs had a slow leak which were fortunately covered under warranty.

Do MB not offer any extended warranty schemes over there? Seems a pity if not as for cars like this in the UK they often prove very worthwhile if you’d otherwise be paying main dealer repair rates

 

[BaldGuy]

Depreciation was the reason my 2013 SL63 went... it was mint with 30k miles on it. My C350 Coupe costs me hardly anything to run, looks more than it is and is the perfect daily... PCS look after it and other than the Electroplate i've just had replaced its been good as gold... I've taken my money out of cars as such, my other car has 2 years dealer warranty and is exactly what i need at the moment... Although saying that these dealers are no different sharks to the Benz dealers....
My buddy is a BMW chap through and through and has just got his X3 4.0M, its a lovely bit of kit... fully loaded and BMW just do it so well

 

[Steveml63]

I hate to sound boring but the dealer won’t care if you go off to BMW, yes it’d be nice to have some goodwill on warranty claims etc but sometimes you have to draw the line and look at the bigger picture. I wouldn’t have been best pleased either at having to fork out £1900 on a repair out of warranty but to be fair it’s par for the course on cars like these, especially well used (100,000km) end in hot climates (Dubai?)

Never nice having to pay out at the time but averaged out over the ownership period?

At least you got some decent useage/mileage out of the ML. My E63 although 4 years older had only covered 11k miles when I bought it last year and that had cost and lost pretty much the same amounts in depreciation as yours. In other words about £61k/11k miles or just over £5/mile (£5000 per 1000 miles puts it into perspective best for me!)

Funny enough even with that mileage it’s still had a couple of expensive repairs in the last year - a new headlight (ILS type) was over £1k and both rear air springs had a slow leak which were fortunately covered under warranty.

Do MB not offer any extended warranty schemes over there? Seems a pity if not as for cars like this in the UK they often prove very worthwhile if you’d otherwise be paying main dealer repair rates

Hi,
When we bought the car it came with a 5 year unlimited warranty from the Mercedes dealer.
That is why we were so angry when they would not cover this particular failure.
What also annoyed us was that the car had only recently had its 105,000km service at the dealer and nothing was flagged up about the suspension at that service.
It failed just 2000km later and to rub more salt into the wounds they said it would have probably been covered if it happened before 100,000km.
We did not consider it normal wear and tear - as it failed suddenly.
Whilst the dealer does not lose that much money from us not going back - a lot of our friends buy new cars regularly and they will now think twice about their future purchases.
At least with BMW here - everything is fully covered including brake pads, discs etc. for 8 years/160,000km
Cheers
Steve

 

[grober]

WRT the high tyre and brake wear I would offer that in addition to the normal demands of a heavy high powered car that the ML's Electronic Stability Control would be constantly braking individual wheels "on the fly" to suppress body roll and enhance the cornering characteristics of a high riding 4X4. This might result in the higher wear characteristics you experienced??

 

[Steveml63]

WRT the high tyre and brake wear I would offer that in addition to the normal demands of a heavy high powered car that the ML's Electronic Stability Control would be constantly braking individual wheels "on the fly" to suppress body roll and enhance the cornering characteristics of a high riding 4X4. This might result in the higher wear characteristics you experienced??

Agreed - we also used the Automatic Cruise Control on a daily basis, especially when on the motorways.
This also automatically brakes - to maintain the correct distance with the car in front.
The back brakes wore out much more frequently than the fronts. Luckily we only replaced one set of discs - as the German specialists that we used had access to disc skimming workshops.
The original tyres were Pirelli and we used 8 new ones. The last set of 4 tyres were Yokohama Advans and they were quieter and lasted much better than the Pirellis.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Interesting read.

ML63, who’d have one?

 

[clk320x]

Interesting read.

ML63, who’d have one?

Yeah we all know you gotta have two

 

[Steveml63]

Interesting read.

ML63, who’d have one?

Somebody with more money than sense!!

 

[BaldGuy]

Loved mine....

 

[SmartAmg]

Loved mine....

That's all that matters then.