South African Factory

[ddentrec]

I refused to buy a South African built M-B; my neighbour had one of the early C-Class 200K’s and it squeeked and rattled and had a dodgy ‘orange-peely’ paint finish below the boot lid.

I am picking up my new C-Class on Friday: it is an Avantgarde SE Estate which was Bremen-built. That was stipulated as part of the purchase requirements. I also received the offer to collect the car from the German factory and was appalled at the blatantly misleading suggestion that you would be picking up the car ‘direct from the factory’ when for RHD C-Class saloons the factory was 3,000 mile away!

I think that the quality problems have been resolved in the SA factory but really there should not have been any such problems in the first place.
B

 

[saorbust]

C Class LHD Saloons and all Estates, plus the new CLK Class are all built on the same production line in Bremen (I visited it a month ago).

The RHD Saloon is built in SA. Thats the new model !

Bremen also build SL Class. They are tooling up at the moment to build the new SLK.

Clarky.

 

[esox]

So if you want to personally collect a W203 that was built in S.A. they ship it to Germany first? I found out about the S.A. factory after i had ordered my 203 but the salesman said "all MBs wherever they are built are made to the same standards".However,i think anyone who buys a Benz automatically assumes they are built in Germany by Germans with their traditional attention to detail and efficiency.(mine was built in Germany anyway`cos it was an estate)

 

[Dave Kerr]

yes the C class is made in SA, I have done over 14000 miles and not had one problem not even minor. I was worried until I read on the peach or lemon site about the guy who had so many problems with his C Class (made in Germany) estate, leaking steering rack, then new steering rack, car pulling to the left when braking, rear hatch lock popping open he asked for a new car and got one all this in one month, another (Estate owner) had his month old car off the road for two weeks over Christmas with an electronic gear box fault.
Having said that, a friend of mine's C class saloon (220 cdi) had a blocked cat which then knacked up his turbo, good job it only cost £1500 to repair and our project managers C220 saloon which had a smell of diesel in the car for past 6 months, its pissed him off that much he returned the car (company car) and now has a Rover.