I’ve never owned a Toyota but I was recently quoted $680 for disks and pads, and labor for a VW. I ended up doing it myself for $250 in parts. I did pay nearly $1000 for the same exact job on my MB. In retrospect, should have done it myself as well.
That said, I have trouble believing that a Toyota brake job is half the price of a VW brake job for parts and labor. Perhaps your mechanic charges far less than mine.
Oh, yeah. The kind of G-Wagens I’ve ridden in (okay, it was only two of them) were nothing to do with luxury. They looked like military vehicles (so much so, that we actually were waved on at the border in either Romania or Bulgaria with the border agents thinking we were KFOR [Kosovo Force]). Not a single creature comfort in those particular ones, but it looked like it was built to survive combat, so I’ll give it that.) Actually, here’s a picture of one of them that my friend owned and we had many an adventure in. Between that and owning an old 1979 Mercedes 240D W123 (which I’m sure was probably quite nice at the time), I guess that’s why I don’t necessarily consider think they’re only luxury cars.
I’ve owned five BMWs, four Porsches, and a Rolls-Royce, among other cars. I don’t disagree with the above at all. I was just pointing out where things were headed. Pretty much every human has some consumer product where this applies to them - it’s odd how many think one person’s choices are silly without acknowledging their own. My sister, for instance, thinks anything nicer than her 15-year old Honda CRV is a waste - yet spends about five grand a year on trips to various beachfronts for a week or two. Getting drunk in damp, sandy environments is her thing, cars and motorcycles are mine.
Acknowledging that the plural of anecdote is not data, here’s my anecdote. I work for a nonprofit that continuously struggles with the logistical challenges of getting over a hundred lawyers from the office to the courthouse, where we don’t have parking. The courthouse and the office are only a mile apart, but it’s literally uphill both ways (no snow, thankfully, and we do have shoes!) We’re not tryna be fancy, but our CEO finally shelled out for 2 Mercedes Sprinters to shuttle us back and forth all day, because the Ford equivalent we bought first was spending half its life in the shop and ultimately costing us more in repairs and replacement rentals. So there’s that.
I have never owned a Mercedes but I’ve driven a few including an AMG SL (last week) and yeah, they’re fine, but I wasn’t impressed at what that amount of money will buy you.
I worked for Ford at about that time and was embarrassed by the ads where people would see a Ford, and say, “Oh, the Joneses got a new Mercedes!” Making your whole selling point that you copied Mercedes styling was desperate.
All luxury goods are like that. The higher the price, the higher the profit margin. At a certain point, luxury manufacturers are not selling you functionality, they are selling you image–they are selling you the right to think you’re better than everybody else. And that right costs a lot of money.
I remember that. The ads were unintentionally hilarious. Mercedes has long had a flair for aesthetic design, while the Granada looked somewhat like a horse’s butthole. It was basically a really ugly car with a sort of vaguely Mercedes-like grill incongruously bolted on the front of it, while the actual Mercedes – while obviously dated by today’s standards and not nearly as elegant as they later became – had fine classic lines. Some of the new ones today are practically works of art, IMHO, and I don’t say that just because they’re expensive. BMW doesn’t have that same aesthetic, and some Rolls Royce and Bentley models today can be fairly described as verging on ugly.
I was at a run-of-the-mill auto repair franchise shop on Friday getting some fairly simple repairs done. There was quite a high-end Mercedes SUV in there, so that couldn’t be generally true.
But Mercedes, like most high-performance cars, are temperamental and need expensive regular maintenance.
Yeah, this is why I was asking about objective comparisons above. Higher end Fords and Toyotas and Hyundais will add more features related to comfort. My Expedition, for example, has all of those things on its checklist. (Granted, it’s a large SUV and its driving dynamics are different than a sedan.)
Camrys and Accords are pretty superlative cars actually. The fully optioned ones are very impressive machines. The McDonalds of the car world would be the Chevy Cruzes, Ford Focuses, Nissan Versas, and so on.
I found this two-door Granada from 1978, very well maintained by the looks of it. Not gonna lie, I would drive the shit out of that thing, especially if I could get it with a manual transmission and a V8. It looks like a miniature version of a sixth generation Thunderbird. It does NOT look like a Mercedes. But I still think it looks cool.
The four-door version does leave something to be desired, and it DOES look like a cheap knockoff of a Mercedes.
In Spain A4s are often used as company cars for people who get one as a perk: since that’s usually the “agressive salesman” types and those tend to be agressive drivers, a car that’s really very nice has grown a terrible reputation as a douche-wagon. The problem is not that it’s expensive(ish): the problem is that it has become associated with the kind of jerk who may occasionally be found driving his wife’s company-provided A4 because his own company-provided A4 is in the garage (he tried to cut a roundabout short, the roundabout won) and his personal car is impounded (those cops have no sense of humor and insist that clocking in at 110km/h in a spot marked 50 is no joking matter).
Yeah, in Germany, the Mercedes brand is like Chevy in the US. Every taxi I saw in the 90s was usually a Mercedes 190E. I owned a 70s vintage 240D when I first got there. What a piece of shit that old thing was. It always seemed to me that Mercedes had a problem with their paint coatings. The things seemed to have rust issues.
I drove both a BMW 325i and an Audi on a couple of business trips. They could certainly fly down the autobahns, and handled very well. I like cars, but I’m not willing to pay the US prices for any of them.
Seems to me, US prices for BMWs, Audis and MBs are a bargain compared to what they cost in Europe. And you’d be lucky to get the same engines we get in North America.
Probably, but still too rich for my blood. Same for Acura and Lexus.
I’m driving a Mercedes these days. The thing is solid. It has the feel of a car that is really well built.
It’s not fancy, it’s a station wagon. I bought it 3 years ago for the princely sum of $3,000. The rear suspension is shot, the rear window regulator is broken, the headlights mismatched, it’s 19 years old and every single body panel on it has rust.
Despite all this, it feels like a very solidly built car, it doesn’t feel cheap, it doesn’t feel like corners were cut to keep the price down.
Here’s an actual 1978 Mercedes to compare them with.
Or better still, here’s an example of one of the ads where Ford tried to compare them.
I’ve read that this was a gimmick that Lee Iacocca came up with when he was CEO at Ford – take a fairly ordinary car, but give it some “luxury car” styling touches like a fancy looking grille or a vinyl roof.
That is even worse than I remembered.
for all that money you would think you would get good reliability but you don’t . So be prepared for way more problems than a Honda or Toyota.
While I haven’t had any real “seat time” in a Mercedes, I have spent plenty of seat time in Volkswagens (amongst other cars) and I can say that there seems to be something more “Precise” about European cars, they just generally feel tighter put together and have more emphasis put on the driver experience…
to sum up my car ownership, in order of ownership;
'88 Ford Escort Pony, '92 Dodge Shadow America, '98 Dodge Neon Highline, '02 Dodge Neon Base, '07 Saturn Ion 2, '07 VW Rabbit MkV, '11 Honda Element LX, '12 VW Golf TDI
of all those cars, I hated the Escort (unreliable piece of crap), LOVED the Shadow and '98 Neon, they may have been cheap econoboxes, but they had a spirit to them, they were FUN, the '02 Neon was softer and more bloated and less fun, the Ion was mediocrity on four wheels, the Element was extremely versatile, but soulless (my first and last sludgebox automatic) and got crap fuel mileage
out of all those cars, I still own the '07 Rabbit (2 door, 5 speed manual, 200,000+ miles still on the stock clutch and just as solid as when I bought it), and the '12 Golf TDI is my daily driver
the TDI is a DSG “Automated Manual”, and the only reason I went with the DSG is because it was in my price range ($9,000 with 50,000 miles on the odometer, Certified Preowned with a 2 year bumper to bumper warranty, and 4 year 150,000 mile powertrain/emissions warranty from date of CPO purchase, no it’s not a conventional manual, but as automatics go, it’s the best compromise for a hardcore manual guy like myself
i’m still keeping my eyes open for a 6 speed manual Golf TDI, when one comes in in my price/mileage range, I WILL be trading out of the DSG, the DSG is a good automatic, but it IS an automatic, the paddle shifters are the saving grace, allowing me to take over control of the transmission whenever I want…
Out of all those cars, the VW’s still put an ear-to-ear grin on my face, they have amazing crisp handling, acceptable power, and are generally just a nice place to be, they’re not as “refined” as a Merc/Bimmer, but they do have a similar precision feel to them, very driver-focused
comparing the two directly, the Rabbit is a hair more engaging due to the 5 speed manual, it’s just a hoot to drive, but the TDI is no slouch either, and with 236 Ft-LB of torque on hand at under 2000 RPM, it feels like a jetliner on takeoff, and pulls like a bloody freight train under power, plus, the suspension is tuned closer to the GTI, so the handling on the TDI slightly edges out the Rabbit.
Both put an ear-to-ear grin on my face though, and the DSG actually has a couple advantages over a clutched manual (Dear OG, never thought i’d be complimenting an automatic), since the shifts are near instantaneous, power delivery is seamless, and I can actually safely shift gears while apexing a tight corner to keep the car in the powerband, something that is less advisable in a clutched manual, due to the longer interruption of power delivery, there is the possibility of destabilizing the car in technical twisties.
Heh. Volkswagen is the one European brand I don’t plan on buying in a million years. I’ve gotten several of their cars as rentals (multiple models and brands) and the only one whose seat could be adjusted to be comfortable for me was an Ibiza Sport. Sadly and like every other Volkswagen it had the lights in this wheel to the side of and hidden by the steering wheel, rather than on a lever attached to the steering wheel. Maybe people 30cm taller than me can actually see the lights wheel while driving without doing contortions, but I can’t and that makes the lights be the opposite of a safety feature.
