W210 is gone, what was good and bad

[johnmc]

I finally sold the W210 E200. Decided to off it before the car taxes kill the value completely.
Even before the recent budget announcement it was a real problem trying to sell it. People think they will pay £400 tax. Now they very well might! Here's what I will miss:
- Hovercraft ride.
- Quiet cabin.
- Smooth Auto.
- Gunsight on the hood for shooting BMWs down.
- Three weddings as the bride's car. What a laugh!

Not so good, watch out W210 buyers: The car was August 2000 model, saloon.
- Dealers. Every defect below was a fight for justice. Why can't they make it easy?
Bar stewards the lot of them. Eye-watering service charges.
- Fuel economy 26mpg,especially at £1.50/ltr by Xmas (BP prediction).
- Bootlid; 4 doors; Bonnet, both front wings replaced for rust. Almost full respray. £300 of my own money for the bonnet stone ship shotgun effect. Multiple visits and hassle needed.
- Front sub-frame replaced for severe rust, holes in it.
- Air mass sensor failure.
- Two electric window motor failures (my expense; £150 from local garage).
- Brake light housing that melted for no reason.
- Battery failure at two years (extra capacity battery). £100 own expense.
- Total brake failure on both circuits at the same time, replacement of ABS pump £1,300 expense after battle with Merc. Very poor design if you ask me.
- Rear window heater, wire fell off.
- Complete lack of interest from Milton Keynes in the quality of their product. I think they've given up for now at least. Clowns, they are losing customers hand over fist.

In balance, more defects that my 1981 Mini-Metro but a fine car when it was working and not rusting into bits. That was the first two years then!

Couldn't recommend that you buy one.

What next? The cars will need a re-shuffle need year, so I'll hold off and see how the new E-class looks. New Jag XF looks good too. No rush. Merc will need to improve a lot before I'll take the plunge with them again.

John

 

[Ron Palfrey]

Ouch! What a lot of problems John.

Makes my 1994 C280 Elegance Auto look brilliant - it never goes wrong! Then again I service it myself so I know its been done. 110k miles and averages 27mpg. It was made in the days when Mercedes meant quality.

I'm selling that soon but bet I'll only get around £1500 for it because of petrol prices. Depreciation will be negligible though for the next owner.

Ron

 

[jberks]

Merc will need to improve a lot before I'll take the plunge with them again.

They already did - about 3 years ago.

 

[A210AMG]

Hello


Don't think you can compare a 8 year old merc with a new one, they are a LOT better now. Saying that even older ones than yours are better (W124, SEC etc) it does seem that the model you bought does have a bad reputation for rust the other problems were probably down to it being a Friday afternoon build

My brother had a Mondeo (sorry Jag) and that had huge problems from new (X type estate).


The best car he has had and he does big miles (60K+ a year) was a Lexus is200 nothing went wrong, nice to drive, well specced for money, kept reasonable price.

Also Tax and petrol cannot be the cars fault?

 

[vijilants]

There was never any excuse for the rubbish that MB built in the late 90s and early 2000s. As a result, I think they lost a lot of loyal customers who were stung in the same way.

You could buy a Jap in that era and earlier for less that half the price and you will never see a spot of rust on it nor these suspension bush failures that seem to plague these models.

A lot of people tend to praise these vehicles as "well engineered". My attitude is if something is well engineered, it is very reliable. I don't think you can say that about these mercs, what with MAF failures, crankshaft sensor failures, suspension failures, electrical failures, oil leaking into wiring looms and causing ECU failures, wiper mechanism failures and rust.

These are all common problems on Mercs.

How on earth does anyone class this as "well engineered " ????

 

[jberks]

These are all common problems on Mercs.

Replace "are" with "were" and I would wholeheartedly agree with you.

We keep going round in circles here. Yes, 1998-2003 were not their greatest hour. Yes they cut corners and some components failed. No they weren't the best cars on the market then. The problem is that by the time, we found this out, most of us already had them. Then when we were disgruntled, for the most part, MB remedied them FOC and when we came to change, mercs were good again so there was no reason to avoid them, aside from cutting of your nose...etc.
As far as engineereing is concerned, this covers far more than just whether a simple electrical component lasts long enough. Drive a Japanese car that's done 150k and then drive a (possibly rusty) 210 that's done the same mileage. Then you'll understand where the 'engineering' comes into it. It's hard to see when the cars are new and the mileage low, but once age starts to creep in, the differences really start to show.

I was always told that if you wanted a car to last you 10 years and a couple of hundred thousand miles, still be comfortable and still be repectable when you turn up anywhere, then you bought a merc. i believe that this was and still is still true.

 

[vijilants]

As far as engineereing is concerned, this covers far more than just whether a simple electrical component lasts long enough. Drive a Japanese car that's done 150k and then drive a (possibly rusty) 210 that's done the same mileage. Then you'll understand where the 'engineering' comes into it. It's hard to see when the cars are new and the mileage low, but once age starts to creep in, the differences really start to show.

I was always told that if you wanted a car to last you 10 years and a couple of hundred thousand miles, still be comfortable and still be repectable when you turn up anywhere, then you bought a merc. i believe that this was and still is still true.

The reason why the 150k W210 will drive well is because by 150K it is probably on its third set of suspension bushes, whereas the Jap would still be on its originals.

Its not really just a case of electrical issues, as these suspension bushes are either poor quality or very badly designed.

I certainly don't believe that Merc suspension that rapidly wears down suspension bushes is well engineered

Personally the main priority I have when using a car is to get from A to B reliably and safely. If I had to do a long distance run and had the choice of a 10 year old Merc and say a 10 year old Honda, Id pick the Honda any day of the week as it is a far more reliable car and I also know its engine will not come to s sudden stop at speed because a crankshaft sensor fails - this is a very dangerous failure to have and I have experienced it on my previous Merc.

When it comes to building reliable engines and associated components I really don't believe you can beat the Japs. True the ride may not be as good as the Germans in certain instances and they may rattle a bit more on the interior fittings, but their engines are extremely well engineered, including the surrounding components.

Japanese electronics and associated systems are also literally indestructible.

If Mercedes wanted to build a good car they should have looked in that direction and learnt a thing or two.

Some people may think that I'm knocking Mercs, but I've owned Mercs and also Japs, and to be honest, the Japs have been by far the better car when it comes to reliability any day of the week.

Nobody wants a car that gives problems.

I currently own a very low mileage W202 and yes its a solid drive but I just don't have that trust in it.

 

[jberks]

The 202 should be bullet proof. Mine was anyway. I had it 9 years and when I sold it, the buyer promptly upped sticks and moved to eastern europe, taking the C with them. It was last heard of purring it's way down the black sea coast with a delighted owner behind the wheel.

Yes I agree, if you want trouble free mechanicals you can't beat the Japs. No question. That said, when you look at mercs, the mechanical components rarely ever give trouble. Its almost always a 50p electronic component that lets the side down. Why the Japs can make these reliably and the likes of Bosch can't I don't know, though to be fair, Nissan went through a lot of MAS units too, only theirs were built into the throttle housing and were damn expensive as a result.

The thing is that their interiors are so cheap and nasty - even today I've not seen an interior that comes close to a German one. Even the top of the range lexuses don't come close to a comparable S class and the IS is light years behind a C (though the current C isn't close to the 202 IMHO). As thats the place I spend my time, this, plus ride comfort and general character is important to me. True, if the car was unreliable I would relent and go Jap too but I can honesly say that aside from one unfortunate incident with a key, in 10 years of merc ownership, I have never been left stranded or even delayed. True, I've had the odd foible, but nothing that couldn't be lived with or wait for a convenient trip to the garage.

 

[jon cash]

I have to agree with j berks here it was a very dark time from 1998-2003 selling mercedes and to be honest i think alot of it came down to dealers not being used to dealing with such troublesome cars, from 2003 its been bliss, i have many a custmoer trade back in there lexus gs/ls, bmw 3/5/7 just because of the soleless feel that japanesse car have, many of them praise the spec they get on there jap trap metal cages but they do not complain when they have to spec up there C/E/S class to bring them to there desired specification. I am a very young mercedes fanatic ever sense i got a spin in my dads friends 1992 W140 300SE many moons ago, and i fear it will never go away.
Go to japan and ask them what there favourite car is and unless they work for toyota they will always say european car espically mercedes are the best.
If you are that unhappy with mercedes why pay the premuim to drive them just buy a japanesse box and drive that till a 2003+ model becomes available within your budget.
Look at the extended warranty works that mercedes carried out since these problems arouse and you can see that customer satisfaction is very high on the agenda, we all love our mercedes and it is indeed shameful what has occured in the dark ages of the millenuim.

 

[johnmc]

Hi Guys,
A lot of good points, but for me there are two key things wrong at Merc:

Dealers, sorry but just not good value for money. I'm also an Chartered Engineer, and
there is simply no excuse for the way that the problems in the mid-90's were handled by Merc and their dealer network. I can allow 6 months for a learning curve to realise that there is a serious proble, but for years- not a chance. This is just very poor management, period, to the point of being childish. I hope none of them claimed any quality certification during that period. If they do it should be withdrawn.

Proof of Quality. They started trying to fix issues in 2005, it's far to early to say if this will be sustained. There's evidence that "out of box" factory shipment to customer defects have improved, but that's the basics, if you can't get that right you are in a sorry state. Any dealer who gets that wrong should be "retired". The reliability stats for the 3-5 year period are still not showing the right answers, but new models should be improving it.

I'll wait for the data on quality to pick up, but also want to see Merc dealers offering better value. How come Fiat and Hyundia can offer free 5 year warranties, but the great Mercedes cannot? Come one! Forget the goodwill, give us the hard contract. I also want to see service packages like BMW and others now offer to drive down your service costs. No special offers, lower cost as standard. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Bye!
John

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Theres no such thing as a free 5 year warranty. The cost will be included in the price of the vehicle.

 

[teddycatkin]

Got rid of my W210 E240 this year at 1/2 what I paid for it after 2 years ownership and went back to W124TE -it took 9 months to find though with 74k on clock! a far superior car less complicated and sheer luxury travel on long motoway runs-in my opinon the best car they ever made -had the previous one 6 years !

 

[johnmc]

Theres no such thing as a free 5 year warranty. The cost will be included in the price of the vehicle.

Right, of course it is, no surprise! The problem I have with this is that some makers actually do it, and give you the pece of mind. So Fiat can put 5 years warranty on a £10k Bravo, Kia can put 7 years on a £12k car, Hyundia can put 5 years on a £6k car.

Mercedes can put three years on an over-priced £40k car that costs the same to make as Kia. Come on! The Mercedes "Good Will" beyond 3 years is an old fashioned idea from when their cars were truly differentiated from the rest. Now, reliability and build quality has dramatically improved across the whole industry, there's no reason why most car makers could not offer this deal. Merc and their dealers can easily afford to offer a 5 year total piece of mind deal for their cars built into the price. They won't because they would rather pocket our money and take every opportunity to make us mad when we arrive at a service centre. That's not the thinking of the world's supposedly best car maker is it?

Is it too much to ask for 5 years free servicing and free warranty on a £40k car, that costs the same to make as a humble Ford Mondeo? How about it? No bills for 5 years or 100,miles, apart from tyres and brakes.

That would be a statement of quality and customer satisfaction. When you buy a new BMW in the USA you get most of that as standard, and it's built into a purchase price 25% less than here. We are getting ripped off for being willing to pay for "prestige" wheras the expectation should be for total quality and total customer satisfaction for your over-priced Merc.

Think about it.

John