Quote:
Originally Posted by richardmozis
Here's a part of my member journal:
The maintenance & repairs I have performed since I acquired the car (October 2014, 58,500km) includes:
December 2014 - oil change, air filters, transmission service, and valve cover gaskets (63,636km)
January 2016 - oil change, transmission electrical connector flange replaced (74,140km)
May 2016 - front ball joints & control arms replaced
June 2016 - front brake pads & rotors replaced
January 2017 - oil change (85,151km)
August 2017 - secondary air pump & relay replaced
May 2018 - alarm siren unit replaced
June 2018 - oil change (93,590 km)
July 2018 - transmission service (94,700km)
Sept 2018 - new tires (98,010km)
|
While not bad, the typical barrier to entry for a lot of people is the fact that when you take the car to mercedes for anything that can't be performed yourself the service quickly balloons to multi thousand dollar issues.
I mean hell I have a CLA250, which only gets driven about 5 to 6k a year, and I'm spending right around 1000 dollars a year (averaged across 3 years of ownership) on maintenance alone (and that's in the warranty period). The car has 42k km on it.
Meanwhile you look at vehicles like my FX, and at ~206k km, and in that 206k of ownership I have replaced the battery twice, and just did the 2 rear bearings, and it needs new tie rod ends up front.
Granted I have replaced countless other things on the car for vanity which may or may not have eliminated maintenance issues that might have cropped up. But after 200000km, I'd estimate besides fluids and wear items, the cars total lifetime maintenance is under $1000.
My old work truck driven 115k km in ~2 years I never did anything aside from fluids and brakes. That includes driving FSR's constantly, logging and mining roads, and roads all over BC and AB.
The reality is, you're simply not going to be able to do that with the mercedes cars from that era. Period.
So yeah, spending 30+k on that CLS is not only not a good buy. It's probably a nightmare waiting to happen for anyone who really wants to drive the thing and doesn't have a few thousand atleast saved to put towards potential issues.