How Badly Was Quality And Durability Affected When Chrysler Took Over?

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Very true - it's an age-old argument on here, but when the likes of Fiat/Renault/Peugeot (or whoever!) etc can all make cars that don't rust and melt their wiring looms after 5-10 years, why on earth can't a premium manufacturer like MB?

It should clearly be the opposite.

The noting about costs must have some bearing. I don't doubt that MB spend a lot on R&D these days, but they used to spend a fortune on the older stuff - and they were well engineered, well thought out and built to a great standard overall. If they can't get basics such as paint and wiring correct, you have to wonder what is going on.

Will
 
that would the same with almost any other car.

Ok then, so how many cars today cost as much as 3 terraced houses in Grimsby today? The answer is almost none.

In fact a modern day E-class comes better equipped and would only be worth little more than 1/2 the price of a terraced house. Using house price as a benchmark, either houses are 6x less affordable or MB cars 6X more affordable.

To lose through depreciation the value of 3 houses at todays prices is still one hell of a lot of money.
 
I'm not sure I'd try and accurately compare the cost of houses with cars. Houses are very expensive these days compared to many things from years ago - peoples earnings for a start.

Yep - in relation to what people earn I think MBs are a lot cheaper than they used to be. But the fact that the population has increased and a shortage of housing (or whatever) has lead to house prices climbing to very high levels isn't MBs fault.

I guess you need some kind of international comparison as after all, MB don't just sell cars in the UK :)

Will
 
The rust issue had a lot to do with the change from oil-based paints to water-based ones , brought on by environmental concerns . It took a while for the water-based paint technology to be perfected , if indeed it has as yet ?

This is absolutely bang on, you look at all cars that were painted with the early water based paints and they were all rust buckets within a few years, Vauxhalls being noticeably worse.

Working for the worlds biggest car paint manufacturer supplier water based technology has not been perfected and millions is still being poured into its R&D. Another fine example of greenwash and the environmental bandwagon best thing they could do is outlaw green and ecology groups they do more harm than good and poke their noses into things that don't concern them, if only people realised what their charity donations to certain groups go to fund in the name of the environment you would not do it. like the protest against the new Coal Fired Kingsnorth Power Station in London, the whole thing costing hundreds of thousands funded by age concern WTF is that all about!

Sorry rant over and back to paint none of my car repairs have ever been done using water based paints as the rust or blemish for sure will break back through and any work we do we don't use water based cr*p either.

IMHO water based paint has been a big contibutor to the early rusting of some vehicles.
 
I'm not sure I'd try and accurately compare the cost of houses with cars. Houses are very expensive these days compared to many things from years ago - peoples earnings for a start.

Yep - in relation to what people earn I think MBs are a lot cheaper than they used to be. But the fact that the population has increased and a shortage of housing (or whatever) has lead to house prices climbing to very high levels isn't MBs fault.

I guess you need some kind of international comparison as after all, MB don't just sell cars in the UK :)

Will

Well I don't know if the W124 was extra expensive or not, but I did own a 460 280GE that cost £25K in 1987. It makes that sound like a bargain.
 
That's one hell of a difference and I doubt the new one is that less well engineered. It is just procured and manufactured far more efficiently.

I can't agree. I think there's oodles of evidence that the cars are more cheaply engineered today than 20 years ago. Everything from things like dropping the wonderful single-arm windscreen wiper to the quality of the materials in the cabin.

It's the same for other marques. I visited the BMW Private Collection in Munich a year or so ago and was pretty much blown away by the factory fresh E30 318is that was there among hundreds of other cars. In many ways, it shamed anything BMW makes today in terms of perceived quality / that feeling of integrity and denseness of construction.

They don't make 'em like they used to is a cliche. But when it comes to German luxury cars, it's true.
 
My 1957 219 had a UK list price of £2100 back then . That was not so very far away from the £2500 my father paid for the 4 bedroomed detached house I grew up in and which stood in 1/2 acre of ground . We sold that house after my dad passed away in 1983 and it has subsequently changed hands a couple of times , the last time being about 5 years ago for a little over 1/4 million .

Strangely , car prices seemed to remain numerically static for a while : in 1964 , a 220b ( broadly equivalent car ) was still about £2100 and , in 1970 , the W115 220/8 bizarrely was also around £2100 new , although by then that amount of money might alternatively have bought me a decent hi-fi system rather than a house !
 
talking about houses and cost of cars. I am a farmer and my Dad always said in his day (70s 80s)that a decent new combine would cost about the same as a 3bed house.

The same is true now, just paid just over £300k for a combine that will last about 6yrs :( This cant be far off what a 3 bed house costs.

So cars have fallen compared to houses but machinery in general has not. I think cars are very very good value compared to most other things, although most don't agree with me on this
 
So, to summarise:

Prices are down
Complexity is up
Quality is down

Or is it? What's been the situation since 2003?

And the complexity: fuel injection, ECUs, water-based paint, parking sensors, ICE, ESP, ASR. Anything else?

Actually, given the prices and complexity I would be surprised if quality didn't suffer.

On the house v car price comparison, I wonder how expensive houses would be without planning laws.
 
Re the complexity bear in mind that digital systems get cheaper over time even as they get more complex. Moore's Law and all that. Stuff like parking sensors costs pennies and car makers typically make big profits on a lot of this stuff as options. They charge thousands for infotainment systems that often have less functionality than aftermarket kit that sells for a few hundred.
 
Bizarre, and there I was thinking cars were so much more reliable, how wrong I must be.
Perhaps I had better get the old tool roll out again and put it in the boot.
The truth is since 1998 and getting on for 750,000 mainly business miles I have only suffered one breakdown whilst on the road.
Vehicle reliability year on year increases as does the quality of the components,generally due to manufacturing gains, productivity all along the supply chain increases and unit prices go down, often with % profit margins improving.
The comparison with house prices is onerous because houses are capital items designed to last hundreds of years and the real value in the house is the land its built upon and as they aren't making anymore of that its value will always increase.
I certainly don't want to go back to a 1980s car I'd rather keep my modern ones that I know will start first time every time.
 
"This is absolutely bang on, you look at all cars that were painted with the early water based paints and they were all rust buckets within a few years, Vauxhalls being noticeably worse."

As I've reported elsewhere, the boss of the bodyshop I use remains unconvinced that the problems are attributable to water-based paint per se. Perhaps the techniques of application or the preparation of the base surface are explanatory factors; reduction of the number of coats is an obvious economy measure to any bean counter.

What explains the relative absence of corrosion on the R129, from its arrival 20 years ago with traditional paint through its transition to water-based paint, which must have been used for at least the second half of its production life? I've always wondered whether that was down simply to greater care taken in building a flagship model (perhaps the standards in Bremen were higher too).

I remain stupefied that the might of the best of the German car industry had such a disgraceful lapse.
 

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