The new talking Mercedes

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Mercedes are not like they used to be, Lots of plastic bits and electronics. They seem to go wrong more than the average car now especially the sprinter vans.

I don't like these cars without dipsticks either at all.

Just remind merc owners that they are German taxis

Mike

At least the indicators work, unlike BMWs

It is about time that all German car manufactures stopped putting mainly useless gimmicks in their cars and concentrated on providing good honest products that give good value for money and reasonable priced servicing.

Mercedes are absolute junk! Fortunately for me I profit from their poor quality. Heater plugs regularly cease and then snap off! Timing chain sprockets are made from cheap sintered crap and fall apart at about 50k stuffing the engine!

Making steel sprockets and removing heater plugs should pay for my holidays for the foreseeable future!

If you look at recent reliability data by the warranty companies all German brands are in the bottom half of the table whilst all Japanese and Korean cars are in the top half. In 2013 Audi were rated the second most unreliable car brand you could buy. As for Mercedes they seem more interested in adding electronic gimmicks than ensuring the car starts in the morning.

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HenryB.., Listening to the road traffic reports, I thought that most of the dipsticks were behind the wheel !

Forget not that about 40 years ago the first new British talking car was a BL Maestro.
Ah ! They don't make cars like that any more.......

What is the difference between a hedgehog and a German made car..?

I will leave it to you guys for the answer.

Edited By Ron Laden on 15/11/2018 16:49:37

Mercs did seem to have a reliability problem some years ago. I used to commute daily between Darmstadt and Stuttgart (They build Mercs there), and it always seemed that the majority of cars which were stopped on the side of the autobahn (presumably broken down) were Mercedes of one type or another (followed by BMW).

Now I live in Romania, and literally thousands of Nth-hand Mercedes and BMWs have been brought in from Germany since the demise of Ceacescu, to replace the old Dacia(Renault) 1300's. They are almost all (or will become) deathtraps, because there are very limited repair facilities here (and the Romanian income is even more limited). Some of them are in horrendous condition (There is an 'MOT' check (ITP), but enforcement is virtually nil).

This problem will probably only get worse, given the technological complexity of modern cars. It isn't enough to be a mechanical engineer, you need electronic knowledge as well.

Does the hedgehog have lower emissions?

I have seen on Bentleys and some porsches audi and vw printed on the parts. They are nothing like the Real Bentleys anymore.

I used to get the same question, although my answer was slightly different:

I told them that we all went to the local Mercedes dealers on a daily basis, closely followed by BMW and Audi. The last year I worked, I went to Toyota dealers three times; one was a clutch wornout at 120,000 miles, another was an immobiliser issue and the third was a turbo fault on a diesel. The Korean manufacturers are pretty good too. My experience of modern German cars is that they are overengineered, under developed and surprisingly poorly built. Plus, they're horrible to work on.

Many years ago , when the rear wiper motor on a VW Polo belonging to a work colleague failed I agreed to fix it for her . At that time it was a dealer-only part and so ordered one from local VW dealer . When on collection I complained at the £105 asking price I was told that if I thought that was expensive , then to remember that the same item was fitted throughout the VAG range ,and that the price increased according to which vehicle it was fitted to .

Back in the day, and probably up to the end of the 80's, IMHO, i would say they were the most reliable car you could buy, and probably the best car made.

Talking to German taxi drivers in the 60-70-80's, i was told the common story of their cars (all Mercedes diesels) doing half a million kilometres before being pulled for a rebuild, (manual g/box left alone and in), then a further 500k, so a full million kms, before being sold off to the private market. And that's years of driving thru winters and salted roads too.

The phrase "they don't make them like they used to" springs to mind.

Edited By thaiguzzi on 16/11/2018 02:42:10

Posted by thaiguzzi on 16/11/2018 02:41:17:

 

then a further 500k, so a full million kms, before being sold off to the private market.

 

Edited By thaiguzzi on 16/11/2018 02:42:10

Some of these sold-off taxis ended up in Beirut, among other places, where their working life started in earnest.

"Beirut Merc" is a proverbial expression in my household for an old car that seems like it will go on forever.

Eta: Apologies for giving the impression that the image of the Beirut Merc was supplied by thaiguzzi.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 16/11/2018 03:23:59

Edited By Bill Phinn on 16/11/2018 03:25:05

Edited By Bill Phinn on 16/11/2018 03:32:21

anecdotal evidence:
A recovery driver found he was often taking broken cars the Merc/BMW dealers, but had to ask a collegue how to get to the Toyota dealership.

I rest my case.