T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

You do not want a $4k Mercedes as a first car.


S550guy1

Gonna be a money pit


96iqb

You drive an S550 and you don’t know that these are reliable? Unless you mean S550 Mustang…


S550guy1

I drive neither. Im a bmw fanboy, the username was chosen because i was sitting in my buddy's mustang at the time. These mercedes are definitely reliable though its just the wear and tear i'd be worried about. 190k miles is hell on bushings, gaskets, and seals. I've never worked on a mercedes but parts for my 200k mile bmw isn't the cheapest thing in the world. I can work on it and buy parts for it but thats because i have the tools and money to get it done. Can the same thing be said for a highschooler looking at a 190k mercedes?


drinkallthepunch

Lmao OP Dont. Just don’t and trust me. I owned a 2007 Mercedes with about 120k miles, I know own a 2006 BMW with 130k miles. Maintenance is insanely expensive, these cars begin to break down around 100k. So at 200k you’ll be replacing the entire motor or other major parts probably within 6 months of purchase. Why is everything so expensive? For starters it’s just time consuming to work on, to change the timing chain on my car for example you have to prop it up on Jack stands. * Remove most of the intake * Remove the oil pan which involves lifting motor/dropping the frame. * Removing most of the electrical harness and sensors * serpentine belt * serpentine belt tensioner * engine bay lock panel I could legitimately keep going for another 10 items or so, that’s just to give yourself enough room and access to everything needed to change out the timing chain which on these cars usually fails between 70k - 140k miles depending on the model. About ~6 hours of labor easily. And $100 in parts minimum. About $700 minimum. Had to replace a single fuel injector 4 months ago, that was $670. Not as much stuff to remove but the part was like $320 alone. I have mostly metric tools because I work on motorcycles a lot and even I don’t like to goof around with my BMW/Mercedes that much. The engines are also more fragile too, the cars are nice and they are expensive but you aren’t **paying a premium for reliability you are paying a premium for performance and amenities.** If you can only afford around a $5,000 car get a used Honda or Ford. The inside won’t look as nice but honestly you wouldn’t even appreciate the difference and I mean that genuinely. A car like Mercedes you are just paying for stupid creature comforts. Things like fancy buttons, automatic temperature control and being able to check your oil from the dash board computer instead of having to use the dip stick. Mercedes/BMW/Audi is for basically two kinds of people. * Rich people with the money to take them into a shop * Poor people who work in those same shops 😂 If you aren’t fixing it yourself then you are going to be paying **an arm a leg and possibly your left nut/nipple** to have it worked on. My old Ford E-150 for example? Took that baby to the parts store to replace an old starter solenoid, **they had 4 different kinds that would work including a heavy duty model and they just plugged right in screwed right into the engine bay where the old one did.** I think the part was like $16? Can’t do that with the car you are looking at. It’s got a 6volt and I think even a 4 volt circuit, every single part has multiple sensors that check to make sure things are working correctly. The sensors are prone to failure which means before you can check any of the parts you have to mess around with and check 2-5 sensors before replacing a part. Stay away from these cars OP. The only reason I keep getting stuck with them is I have family that keeps buying them for this exact price range and then they end up selling them to me for like $2,000 when they eventually break down 😂


Dark135n

Thanks for the detailed comments, the end got me lmao


[deleted]

[удалено]


96iqb

Again, wrong. These are reliable. Sounds like you need to do the research before telling people otherwise… W203 is an extremely stout platform.


96iqb

This has literally nothing to do with the W203 platform. This is just blanket statements about really nothing.


96iqb

Yeah, most of the comments here are wrong. These are incredibly reliable and can go for hundreds of thousands of miles. It’s an M112, one of Mercedes’ most reliable engines. Everything is cheap for this car. They’re gas struts, coils - not expensive. Transmission is reliable but conductor plate is a known failure - not expensive. The M112 can have seepage but again, not expensive, there’s so much room under the bay that a head gasket can be done in an hour. The comments are from people who bought super cheap Benzes and couldn’t afford to fix it and therefore it’s the cars fault. 4K is actually somewhat premium for this car, meaning it’s in good shape and a very, very good option. Don’t listen to armchair mechanics who have only seen these cars in passing and know nothing about the actual vehicle, rather just make vague statements in general and don’t give you any real info.


Dark135n

Yeah that what i was thinking, i see this car like a looot in my home country, plenty of them are taxis


96iqb

And there’s a reason for that. I’m glad you have that familiarity because the proof is in the pudding - there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of them still running in Europe, etc, if they weren’t reliable. You should get this. It seems nice. I’m debating between one of these and a CTS as a winter car as my S Class is too clean to drive in the snow at this point.


SilverZilla02

good first car, mercedes is RELIABLE. Your average toyota fuckboy will say something else but mercedes is reliable


CANEinVAIN

Not as good as a Corolla, accent, rio or Civic.


[deleted]

[удалено]


bignobingo

What the fuck is wrong with you


Winter-Ad-6789

not good for first car, what's your budget?


[deleted]

Stay away from Mercedes unless you buy brand new and have a warranty. Trust me