Someone was about to buy a new mercedes at a U.S. dealership, when they decided to look up the reliability ratings in consumer reports. Sure enough, Mercedes seemed to have substantially bad reliability reports.
How can this be? Wouldn’t the premier mass-market manufacturer have top reliability? Is Merecedes’ reliability bad, and if so, what happened? Are the workers in Germany drunk on beer nowdays?
Might I submit that Mercedes has been resting on their laurels while the rest of the world has been getting better?
It seems like it’s the electronic elements that get Mercedes into trouble… doors, windows, whatnot.
A major problem with M-B now is the complexity of the vehicle electronic systems. Add to that the European RoHas Directive (auto electrinics mfgs. cannot use lead-based solders). This results in cracking of solder joints and intermittent contacts. In addition, the 100% tin plating used grows whiskers (small single crystals of tin)-these cause short circuits.
So, yes, most of M-B problems come from the electronics systems-and these are not repairable (they just replace the whole module)-at $$$/a whack.
It is like the Robert Bosch ignition coil disaster of a few years back-AUDI, VW used the same design of coil pack (the individual HV transformer at each spark plug). Bosch made >5 million defective coil packs-and dealers were replacing them on a weekly basis.
So go cry to CONSUMER REPORTS.
Does the the European RoHas Directive apply to VW cars made in Mexico?
I don’t know if the VW Mexico (Puebla) plant makes electronic modules. If they are for export to the EU, they must obey the RoHas directive.
The electronic modules are unlikely to be made by VW. It’ll be a subcontractor like Bosch who handles them. All VW would do is install the modules into the cars.
RoHS
I don’t think this is a valid assumption. From what I recall, MB and all premier brands (until Lexus/Infinity/Acura) have had higher then average cost of ownership. Repairs are more frequent and cost more. In the past, the owners of these cars weren’t as badly affected by repairs (they may have had other cars) so it wasn’t seen as a major problem. Premier was measured in other ways.
Curiously enough the reported reliability trends on German roads are have been in the opposite direction: Mercedes and BMW, who had a bad rep in the earlier years of this decade, show much better than the Japanese nowadays.
breakdown statistics of the largest German automobile association, for 2007 (PDF)
Example for reading the table: of 1,000 Mercedes A-class cars registered in Germany in 2007, that had first been registered in 2007 (i.e. in their first year of operation), 2.1 had to be assisted by the club’s breakdown service in 2007. Of 1,000 Mercedes A-Class registered in 2007 and first registered in 2006 (i.e. in their second year), 3.1 had to be assisted and so on.
Perhaps Mercedes’ bad stats in the US are less due to the product and more to a failure on their part to maintain a good service network?
Perhaps the Mercedes drivers drive less?
Also, certain brands tend to attract fanatics, who’ll overlook problems, no matter how bad they might be, telling themselves that either other car makers have worse problems, or that its simply the price one has to pay for having such a “precision engineered” vehicle, and they will not cotton to the idea that perhaps there’s something wrong with the design of their car.
A buddy of mine has a 2008 3-series BMW and when he asked on a BMW message board about using something other than stock wiper blades, people were, quite literally livid that he dare suggest there was something “wrong” with the stock wiper blades. One person went so far as to check on the average rainfall where my friend lives and compare it to where they lived, and state catagorically that since there was little difference between the two levels of rainfall (about 10 inches per year), that my friend was nuts, because the poster found the stock wipers worked fine.
Hence the origin of the joke:
What is the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche?
A: The porcupine has the pricks on the outside.
This is true. One should always take first hand anecdotes about cars from their owners with a grain of salt.
A common refrain from Eurocar-snobs is to wail about how Mercedes/BMW were better made “back in the good old days” of engine vacuum actuated door locks, often blaming Daimler Benz’s acquisition of Chrysler (which is complete tripe, if anything it was the other way around). The truth, generally, is that back in the old days European cars weren’t much worse that their Detroit 3 and British Leyland/Fiat competitors, and that the Japanese came and changed the quality game on them.
Another common one is about how their silly BMW 3xxs and Audi A4s are engineered for “driving pleasure” or some such, as if driving pleasure and reliability were mutually exclusive engineering goals. I always ask them if
BMW designed their plastic water pump impellers to shatter after 3 years and the rest of the cooling systems to disintegrate after 5 years or if VW/Audi designed their 1.8T coilpacks to rot after 2 years for “driving pleasure”. I’m sure it was a real pleasurable experience. 
The fucked up thing is…all these cars have very reliable, good things about them, the American, European and Japanese cars. It’s just that there are certain areas with vehicles where car makers skimp or fail to recognize a problem with models and since the production is on such a massive scale, these problems tend to manifest themselves after it’s too late for the manufacturer to really do anything about it other than admit and fix the problem, issue a recall or pretend that it isn’t an issue (possibly be re-engineering a faulty part for the next model-year’s production).
Sucks. But that’s manufacturing for you. Although I must note that certain car makers have mastered the art of eliminating many issues better than others, which is why until very recently, the Japanese are making superior overall cars for the average consumer.