New Car home from Stuttgart

[gl boy]

I would hope so; the occupant may be wondering what's going on

that car was inside the hall and has a german number on it thought the english number was allocated to the car as the car (i thiought) is already registered in the uk!

 

[robert.saunders]

Interesting that Peter's car showed 861 on the plate; what sequence is followed I wonder

 

[st13phil]

Why the German Plates?

Thanks to all for their kind words and sharing my happy moment :bannana:

that car was inside the hall and has a german number on it thought the english number was allocated to the car as the car (i thiought) is already registered in the uk!

Interesting that Peter's car showed 861 on the plate; what sequence is followed I wonder

It's quite interesting how the registration thing works. The car is given a German "transit" registration, hence the German looking plate, and is registered in the name of DaimlerChrysler UK. It is registered in Boblingen, hence the "BB" as the first two letters, and I suspect that my car was the 17th one registered for export at Boblingen after Peter's. The important bit on the plate is the red band at the end which indicates the last date on which the registration is valid - in my case 21st Jan 2008 - and means that you have to get the car to its export destination (i.e. the UK supplying dealer) on or before expiry of the plate, otherwise you're in schtuck as none of the registration paperwork is valid after that date.

The vehicle can only be assigned a UK registration once it's on UK soil, so you take it to your supplying dealer immediately on return. They then clean it up, do another PDI, fit any locally supplied accessories and register and tax it for you. Ta-da! You get two new car handovers in place of one

In reality, when you pick the car up from Stuttgart you are acting as a delivery driver for DaimlerChrysler UK who are the UK importers. That way, when your supplying dealer registers it on your return the V5 can still state "declared new at first registration by importer/concessionaire".

BTW, that's no mere "occupant" in the passenger seat, that's my wife

 

[gl boy]

thanks for that always asumed it was pre registered regards jon ..ENJOY

 

[carnut]

Ive had 2 factory collections,one for the SLK in Sindlefingen, and the other for an SL in Bremen. Both experiences ( & I mean experiences!!) were absolutely fantastic and all for the same price as the standard delivery charge ( ie as you have to pay it anyway=nothing extra).
The arrangements,business class flights,collection and trip home are treasured memories.
Sindlefingen via the Mosell region and Bremen via the Cinderella route

If you have the chance, do it!

 

[st13phil]

If you have the chance, do it!

If you're buying your own new Merc then I can only echo that sentiment. I know that sometimes work and other commitments get in the way, but it's amazing what can be rescheduled if you really put your mind to it

 

[Gollom]

Love the write up - MBManInKen would be proud of you. Punctuation all present and correct!

 

[MBManInKen]

Love the write up

Seconded!

MBManInKen would be proud of you. Punctuation all present and correct!

 

[robert.saunders]

Love the write up - MBManInKen would be proud of you. Punctuation all present and correct!

He's our headmaster

 

[MBManInKen]

He's our headmaster

You forgot a full stop there .

I hope there are no kinky references hidden in there .

 

[robert.saunders]

I find the full stop abhorrent to be honest; I am however a fan of the semicolon

 

[MBManInKen]

I find the full stop abhorrent to be honest; I am however a fan of the semicolon

How dreadful - just because that full stop is small and different from others, you discriminate against it! There must be some law against that! What has that tiny little dot ever said or done against you?!

 

[verytalldave]

The C Class might very well be the baby of the 3-box Mercs, but I bet they make more money/profit on sales of C Class cars than any other. They know this and treat their customers accordingly.

 

[robert.saunders]

That's a very good point

 

[R2D2]

Excellent write up. Thankyou for taking the time to write it up and post the photos. It brought memories of our trip in November flooding back. Thankyou.

 

[MBManInKen]

The C Class might very well be the baby of the 3-box Mercs, but I bet they make more money/profit on sales of C Class cars than any other. They know this and treat their customers accordingly.

A number of years ago, I was trying to get some actual numbers on this, but it was surprisingly difficult to get actual data out of the manufacturers.

However, there seemed to be wide consensus that the more upmarket models represented a significantly better profit per unit value. So, the profit on an s-class was a lot more than for the entry level models.

Obviously, they sell a lot more c-classes than s-classes, so a lot of small profits also add up to a big profit.

Many auto magazines stated that the s-class was Mercedes most profitable model. One of the car magazines suggested at the time that the e-class was in absolute numbers the most profitable model, but I couldn't find any verifiable source for either statement.

My understanding at the time was that the c-class wasn't the most interesting model purely financially, but was very important for another reason: it brings a whole lot of people into the Mercedes brand and many c-class owners will go on and become e- or s-class users afterwards.

 

[st13phil]

Love the write up - MBManInKen would be proud of you. Punctuation all present and correct!

That's coz I were properly edumacated all them years ago

 

[C43AMG]

Many thanks for the great write up and photo's. You seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

 

[jeremytaylor]

Glad you enjoyed your collection.

We stayed at the same hotel when we had our factory tour (no collection ) a couple of years ago, and my wife found it very handy for shopping in Stuttgart . Like your wife, mine too was fascinated at the build process, much to my surprise and delight!

 

[st13phil]

However, there seemed to be wide consensus that the more upmarket models represented a significantly better profit per unit value. So, the profit on an s-class was a lot more than for the entry level models.

Obviously, they sell a lot more c-classes than s-classes, so a lot of small profits also add up to a big profit.

The profitablility of individual model lines is very hard to understand unless you have all the data, but a few things to consider include:

• The marginal cost of making one more car is probably disturbingly similar whether it is a C-Class or and S-Class. Obviously the material content of an S-Class is higher, but probably not by as much as most people would think
• The amortised development cost of an S-Class per vehicle is going to be significantly higher than it will be for a C-Class mostly due to the disparate volumes
• The trickle-down effect of technology developed for top-end models blurs the cost picture further. For example, the new C-Class includes brake drying and priming technology which was originally developed for the S-Class. How much of that development cost was written off to the S-Class and how much is carried over for recovery on the C-Class?

In reality, unless you work for DaimlerAG and are privy to the information you'll be hard pushed to make a guess that's even close, but bering in mind that the costs of the vehicles are probably much closer together than the selling prices I think it's safe to assume that the S-Class is a bigger earner per unit that the C-Class.

My understanding at the time was that the c-class wasn't the most interesting model purely financially, but was very important for another reason: it brings a whole lot of people into the Mercedes brand and many c-class owners will go on and become e- or s-class users afterwards.

This always was a fantastically important concept and probably still is, but other forces are at work in this equation nowadays such as manufacturer aggregate fuel consumption targets and penalties in the USA, and aggregate emissions targets and penalties that already exist in some markets and now seem to be heading for Europe. That is why the MINI is so important for BMW for example, as it lowers their aggregate fuel consumption and allows them to sell more gas-guzzling 7-series in the USA.

Mercedes-Benz also has a great deal riding on the new C-Class from a reputation point of view. They absolutely need to demonstrate to a large number of people as quickly as possible that they are back on track regarding quality and reliability - which is one of the reasons that they spent so much effort on getting the quality right and have made such a great feature of it in their marketing of the W204. Of course S-Class buyers demand and deserve the same quality and reliability improvements, but there just aren't so many of them to spread the good news that MB is back on top as there are C-Class buyers.