this is he reason why i am a MB fanatic

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by NefariousKoel

When will people such as Skybird learn?

When your number is up.. there's no amount of contraptions to make you somehow live forever.

I've been in a few crashes including a vehicle that rolled numerous times. I'm still alive.

Perhaps my luck will run out, but it will run out all the same sometime. This "safe vehicle" point is the same as the global warming crowd trying to proclaim the end of the world when all they're doing is trying to make the afforementioned world the way they think it should serve them.

If the above shall be the lesson, I hope I'll never learn at all. Moral of your story: "Why prepare, why being cautious, why thinking twice at all? We all must die one day, and if it is sooner or later, or my lacking care kills others, I do not care - I'm a born apathetic egoist."

[NefariousKoel]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If the above shall be the lesson, I hope I'll never learn at all. Moral of your story: "Why prepare, why being cautious, why thinking twice at all? We all must die one day, and if it is sooner or later, or my lacking care kills others, I do not care - I'm a born apathetic egoist."

Just how can my not wearing a seat belt kill others, Skybird? Tell me, please. Death via human rocket torpedo in the worst case scenario? Ridiculous!

Your retort is quite idealistic, per usual. Perhaps you should force me to do what you want me to? That would be the correct thing to do in your opinion am I correct?

[Skybird]

It seems nobody must force you at all to make a fool out of yourself here.

[robbo180265]

Originally Posted by NefariousKoel

When will people such as Skybird learn?

When your number is up.. there's no amount of contraptions to make you somehow live forever.

I've been in a few crashes including a vehicle that rolled numerous times. I'm still alive.

Perhaps my luck will run out, but it will run out all the same sometime. This "safe vehicle" point is the same as the global warming crowd trying to proclaim the end of the world when all they're doing is trying to make the afforementioned world the way they think it should serve them.

Wow!

A serious bit of baiting going on in this post

[Torpedo Fodder]

Originally Posted by Skybird

after several years when Japanese cars prooved to be the most reliable, in the recent past German cars in general, not only Mercedes, are claiming top positions again.

Which is in direct conflict with the results of almost every single organization on this side of the pond who tracks automobile reliability (J.D. Power, Consumer Reports, AIS, you name it): Over here, European cars almost always trail the pack in terms of reliability, but one similarity between these results is the largest troble spot for European cars here is also the electrical system. So, who's right and who's wrong here?

It does however seem to me that reliability is far more important to North American drivers than Europeans, probably because we drive longer distances on average, sometimes through vast stretches of empty countryside (where it would suck to get stranded), thanks to our sparser population density. This may explain why non-luxury European brands have almost zero market penetration in North America (aside from the BMW-owned Mini, Volkswagen is the only mainstreeam European brand here, and their sales are so small as to make them almost irrelevent in the North American auto market). On the other hand, European brands do command the largest slice of the Luxury market (almost all of said slice is accounted for by BMW and Mercedes; Audi, like it's parent Volkswagen is almost irrelevent here), however Lexus is the top-selling luxury brand here, and Cadillac outsells Mercedes (which is currently number 4 in sales).

Originally Posted by elite_hunter_sh3

LOL i know.. we have te LS460L .... but the funny thing is.. alot of lexus features such as the precollision radar and radar cruise control are from MB

True, M-B did invent many of the safety features that Lexus has adopted, but the question now would be, how is it that Toyota/Lexus can build such a reliable car (The LS has been consistently been ranked as one of the most reliable cars on the road) with all these advanced features while Mercedes can't?

[elite_hunter_sh3]

who screwed Mercedes benz??? Chrysler did (knowing poor american quality...) mercedes reliabilty was top of the list back then... before it bought chrysler... chrysler killed the reliabilty in mercedes... but now mercedes is smart... they shud sell chrysler or someone shud buy chrysler (cuz chrysler is poop... bad cars... bad quality...)..

"

For over one hundred years Mercedes both invented the automobile and just about everything in automotive history. A Mercedes cost double that of an ordinary car and was completely different. For one hundred years the only car you could buy that always just worked was Mercedes. Somewhere around the time Mercedes bought Chrysler in the late 1990s Daimler decided to make cars compromised for cost to compete with everyone else, which was OK since the Japanese had learned by 2000 to make cars as reliable as Mercedes, even if they lacked soul. Thus the market for cars costing double that of regular cars shrunk since you could get a perfectly good Toyota or Lexus that ran great, even if it was boring. Unfortunately Mercedes doesn't know how to make an inexpensive car work well, which is why they bought Chrysler and also why new Mercedes models introduced since then are among the world's least reliable cars. See the April, 2004 and April 2005 editions of "Consumer Reports" for the details. The 1990s SLs are great, but beware new models introduced in the late 1990s and today.

That edition shows Mercedes' recent slide down to the bottom of the reliability chart, far below Hyundai and Kia, with the latest models! I asked my dealer who chalked it up to "well, Mercedes drivers are more picky about everything so they show poorly in surveys," but the Consumer Reports reliability ratings are based on real problems like electrical failures. JD Powers tends to focus more on the paint, which can be ignored. More here and here (towards bottom) and here. On March 31st 2005 Mercedes recalled 1.3 million defective cars made since 2001 with bad electronics. This is the biggest recall they've ever made, in fact, it's hard to recall any serious recalls at all by Mercedes before 1999 when they only made quality.

A few months after the April 2004 issue Consumer Reports tried to address, in a sidebar, why Mercedes and other European cars had fallen so much in reliability. They thought maybe it was the cutting edge technology now employed, but realized that Mercedes has always pushed the envelope extraordinarily well is past decades, and that Honda and Toyota have even more nutty electronic technology in their cars, and those cars work great. It was left as a dilemma, and my opinion simply is that if you want a luxury car on a budget you have to slum with a company known for making good, inexpensive cars like Toyota's Lexus brand. Unfortunately real luxury cars like the former Mercedes were great; they just cost double other cars because they didn't cut any corners. For the past 5 years they've been cutting corners and not very well. It's like trying to retrain a CEO to work flipping burgers: an enthusiastic kid is going to do a better job than a seasoned CEO who'll consider it beneath him."

[Torpedo Fodder]

While I'll agree that Chryslers aren't particulary reliable cars (all my dad's cars have been American, but the only two that gave any serious trouble were the Chryslers), I don't see how Mercedes' reliability problems can really be blamed on Chrysler's: Throughout the period of the DaimlerChrysler merger, most of the manufaturing infrastructure of the two companies remained largely separated, and product flow between them only went one way: from Mercedes to Chrysler: Some examples of direct transfers included the Sprinter van, and the Crossfire sports car, which is a reskinned R170 SLK-Class. The LX platform underpinning the Chrysler 300 and it's siblings while being mostly original still borrows many Mercedes parts, mostly from the W210 E-Class. Mercedes never adopted any Chrysler vehices or technolegy, and the German managment in Stuttgart were the ones calling the shots for the entire company for almost the whole period of the merger. Also, shares for DaimlerChrysler were 80% German owned.

But if it sets your mind at ease, Chrysler has already been sold to US-based private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Despite the supposed synergies of the DaimlerChrysler merger touted by it's architect, then-Daimler Benz chairman Jurgen Schrempp (Mercedes' fall from grace happened almost entirely under his tenure as CEO, which I don't think is a coincidence), merging Chrysler and Mercedes was like trying to mix oil and water, and both companies will be better off now that they've gone their own ways.

[Lagger123987]

Originally Posted by elite_hunter_sh3

i love mercedes benz... all MB cars... and this is why.. all other companies based their safety of MB.. MB had the first airbags,crumble zones, seatbelt pretensioners , "passenger cell"

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oid=1428174512

and that version had no airbags and the family survived...

MB suck, Muscle cars will smoke them sauage burners.

[Torpedo Fodder]

Originally Posted by Lagger123987

MB suck, Muscle cars will smoke them sauage burners.

Let's not get too carried away, shall we? While I do have an affinity for classic American muscle cars (and the Corvette is my all-time favorite car), fact is Mercedes has produced some of the fastest production cars in their respective classes, such as the AMG models and the vaunted McLaren SLR, which are indeed faster than the majority of "muscle cars" (and a simple check of these cars' performance numbers will prove that). Of course, most of these are multiple times as expensive as their muscle car counterparts.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

and muscle cars..... arent safe... id rather be in a high speed crash in a mercedes benz s class or e class or c class... etc... then any american muscle car....

[Happy Times]

<No personal attacks! - Gizzmoe>

[Hitman]

I'm about to take on an old Mercedes restoration project, an '88 190E 2.3, with 219,000 km on it, and boy is that thing made to last. All I had to do to get it running again after two years of dormancy while exposed to the elements (without any long-term storage preparation, I might add) was unstick the brakes, clean the battery posts and add fresh fuel and she ran almost immediately when I jump-started her. Unfortunately, she's not going anywhere just yet, due to a gas leak (hope it isn't the tank, because I'd have to drop out the differential and driveshaft to replace or repair it). Those cars are little tanks, and I still see plenty of 190s on the road here today.

Is it a 16v version or the normal 2.3? I did the same with an E30 M3 some time ago, boy it was a nice project. In the end I had to seel the car with pain in my heart because I used it so little that I had to divert time from other things to get the car out for a spin and prevent it from rusting and wearing out in the garage

The 190 2.3 16v was made for competition, like my E30 M3, (Both went head-on-head in the DTM in the 80s) and as such the road version's detuned engine has even more durability because of strengthened components. A friend of mine had one with 325.000 km on the clock and it still felt powerful with a good psuh in the back when accelerating

I agree that quality was better some years ago, MB did cars like tanks for duration, until they learned that selling a new model each few years was more profitable. IMO of course they are still better quality than most other cars except certain models of other makes, but in average, the best quality cars around are MB.

That's however not to be mixed or messed up with safety! Safety comes from design and certain gadgets, quality not just from design but also from the materials chosen and the build process.

Proof of old MBs durability is the amount of them you see in the hands of north-African inmigrants proceeding each summer thousands of kilometers down and up the mediterranean coast with little maintenance. Never seen any BMWs or other cars as old as those MBs and still running under such abuse

[Torpedo Fodder]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Is it a 16v version or the normal 2.3? I did the same with an E30 M3 some time ago, boy it was a nice project. In the end I had to seel the car with pain in my heart because I used it so little that I had to divert time from other things to get the car out for a spin and prevent it from rusting and wearing out in the garage

Just the regular 2.3L with an automatic transmission, unfortunately. The 2.3-16 are very rare over here, and the 2.5L-16 never made it to our shores at all. But since I'm only paying $350 to buy the car (plus repair costs) I'm not complaining. Someday though I may drop a more powerful engine into it.

I agree that quality was better some years ago, MB did cars like tanks for duration, until they learned that selling a new model each few years was more profitable.

They also learned a good way to enrich their service departments, which is why modern Mercedes are deliberately made to be hard to work on without specialized tools and training. By comparioson, that 190E of mine is proving to be a rather easy car to work on: Nothing very unusual about the design of components, and most of the fasteners are either standard screws or Metric hex nuts.

[azn_132]

Originally Posted by Lagger123987

MB suck, Muscle cars will smoke them sauage burners.

MB along wit most of the japanese made cars that I like. And Muscle cars are for usin hydraulics in the cars and 20's on them too, also use for the hyphy movement too.