Have you ever been captivated by an old German car for sale, then get scared off by the prospect of repairing the thing? As an owner of a fleet of old German cars, I can say that some of these cars are cheaper to run than they look, but some, well, they could probably put a mechanic’s kid through college.
Back in 2021, I drove out to Indianapolis, forked over $2,500, and started driving home with a dream car. For all of 30 minutes, my 2004 Volkswagen Phaeton V8 was the most comfortable and most luxurious car that I have ever driven.
Then the temperature gauge ran into the red, leaving me on the side of an interstate watching the coolant bubble over.
I would limp the car home 30 minutes at a time, turning what was a 3.5 hour drive into a 7 hour ordeal. But I succeeded in getting it home. Some diagnosis suggested that I was looking at a new water pump and a thermostat. Before I could even fix that, I got smacked in the face by the dome light, the air suspension failed, door trim fell off, the sunroof got jammed, the hood stopped opening, the trunk stopped opening, and the ABS module wasn’t working. Worse, the fancy motorized heater vents all failed in a closed or partially open position.
It seemed that the only thing that did work was the engine and transmission so I called up my independent mechanic and sold it to him for what I paid for the car. I somehow didn’t lose a dollar on it. Last I heard, he spent over $6,000 on parts to fix it and it still wasn’t working because a wheel cracked. I can’t imagine the total if the labor wasn’t free!
Later, I found out that my Phaeton was really three dead Phaetons and a dead Porsche Cayenne in a trenchcoat. It was a zombie of dead VAG walking!
Thankfully, the Ski Klasse project that we’re doing with rally legend Bill Caswell is in far better condition!
Still, you have to laugh at this COTD-winning joke about repair costs from andyindividual:
That “Mercedes on a hangar” is actually “fishing mode”. When you press it, the Mercedes becomes bait on a line. You can catch some of the best, most expensive mechanics with it.
This reminds me of a humorous Top Gear segment:
Hopefully, we won’t break this car with our racing shenanigans. I expect a particularly rough challenge will come with what I will do with the car after our initial plans. That’s the only hint for now.
Have a great evening, everyone!
See, I’m convinced that most of the “Porsche tax” is in mechanics’ fees. The parts—at least for good parsh—aren’t too terribly priced. Anytime I have to look up Mitsubishi parts after buying a whole bunch of crap for the 944 makes me wince, for one.
I’d imagine it’s pretty similar for other German cars, too. As someone else already noted, Mercs are frickin’ taxis in other parts of the world. They’re regular cars that get dressed up in luxury guise for the American market. I’m not afraid of it. Maybe it’ll take a longer time to make the fix, but whatever—skip the mechanic, go slow and do it right.
It was always thus, in 1969 my parents bought a used Mercedes 250S which was a very cool looking car and apparently drove nicely but always had one power window out of order and was a frequent flyer at the shop before it threw a rod in 1974 and was replaced by a Volvo.
The only Mercedes I would consider trying to run is a W123 generation diesel because they were engineered to last forever and could be kept running by a bush mechanic. Heck some of those 70s diesels still had a manual fuel shut off
Most of the taxis in North Africa are* W123 Mercs, almost exclusively in light brown, or beige.
*(Or were? They were twenty years ago anyway)
The maintenance cost of my 300 SDL worked out to about $0.10/mile. Not the cheapest thing to run, but it was significantly cheaper than buying a cheap new car. When something on it broke, it was very expensive to fix, but it didn’t happen often. I bought the car after it had already been around the world 10 times. I always kept a healthy bank account just in case something broke. The most expensive fix was the transmission, at about $3,000, and which I didn’t have the tools, time, place, or skillset to rebuild on my own.
My 20 something cousin stopped by the shop I worked at and had my buddy put an E46 she was test driving up on the rack for a PPI. He got underneath it and said everything looked OK but asked her “Are you rich?” This little college girl went “Uh, uh, no.. what do you mean?” He said “even if you can afford to buy this car, you can’t afford to drive this car.” I’d like to think that’s what influenced her into buying a Civic.
My “mint” w126 cost me $4k to buy (10 years ago) and another $10k to keep running over the next 18 months. The hype around the well made Mercedes is just that…hype.
I also owned a 240d and 300ce that while not as disastrous as the 126, definitely cost me more to run than owning a new Accord or Camry.
If you can’t afford them new, you can’t afford them used.
The mechanics I knew that put their kids through college did so by working a second job.
If your repair bill is high, don’t blame the mechanic. For each hour of labor you buy (what is it now, $200/hr?), the mechanic gets $12. Manny Moe and Jack pocket the rest.
The world would be a much better place for all if we cut Manny, Moe, and Jack out of the equation. They don’t do the work, but they take the money. Imagine cutting the cost for the customer by 2/3, and tripling the mechanic’s pay. 99% of the population comes out ahead. Get rid of all of the taxes and regulations at the same time, and Manny, Moe, and Jack are rendered totally irrelevant and unneeded.
It’s so wild how the small repair shops are being squeezed out by not just the manufacturers but the customers too. When did people start becoming afraid of the local repair shop with the awesome reputation thats been around for 30 years? Or did the computers and new car tech force it too? Probably a bit of both, but they’re definitely disappearing in the suburbs of Chicago. Even Manny Moe and Jack closed up their store/shop near me.
Let me be clear that this is definitely a joke. We definitely know that our cars are expensive to repair because *gestures at automaker* not because of the mechanics. Most of the mechanics I know make the same joke about the repair costs of certain cars even though fixing that old Audi isn’t actually going to make them rich.
I’d love to see a deep piece on that effed-up Phaeton of yours. We need to know!
Same! I’ve always wanted to play with one of those! Such cool cars.
Mercedes experiences makes my older Volvos sound like anvils of reliability.
Years ago, we bought an absolutely beautiful 300TD in ice blue with a tan interior. It worked great for about a week. Then it would not shift up beyond second gear and was even slower than it was designed to be. We took it in to Mercedes-Benz of Manhattan (NYC) only to be told that the transmission did not belong in the car. It was from a European gas sedan. Oops! The service department could not figure out how it has been made to work in the first place. Fun! We learned from the service manager that the only available solution was to “replace the unit”, which would cost more than we had paid for the car. Surprise! We were lucky to have purchased from an honest seller and they refunded our money. That was an absolute nightmare of a used car purchase that proves the point about buying an “inexpensive” Mercedes-Benz.
Called my mech about dropping off my clk430 to get front and rear bushings replace, he started talking about buying a project 500sec but wasn’t sure. This week i called back and he said he bought it, I’m pretty sure I’m funding the purchase.
Hah!
As a serial VW owner I should know better. I have never gone with the top trim models that have the “fishing mode”, but I sure have heard stories.
When my 2003 GTI outlived it’s warranty and I started going to my favourite indy mechanic for regular (ya sure, regular) care, I actually got a thank you card from his daughter when she graduated university. I laughed my ass off. I left it in the folder full of service records for the next owner who also happened to be a mechanic. I’d like to think he framed it.
BTW – I don’t care how derided that generation of GTI or the 1.8T is amongst the cognoscenti. I loved that car. It was just right for me.
Similar experience with my 03 VR6 GTI. Great car when it wasn’t broken or breaking.
Same. I had on 04 VR6 GTI. I loved driving that car, but I hated owning that car.
You’re not putting any kids through college on a $47k mechanics salary. Ask me how I know…
“Hopefully, we won’t break this car with our racing shenanigans.”
… how did you and every editor completely miss you writing that?
Sigh.
Somebody add ‘permanently mount a welder in the back’ to the todo list.
That’s me. I’m the welder in the back!
It was always thus, in 1969 my parents bought a used Mercedes 250S which was a very cool looking car and apparently drove nicely but always had one power window out of order and was a frequent flyer at the shop before it threw a rod in 1974 and was replaced by a Volvo.
The only Mercedes I would consider trying to run is a W123 generation diesel because they were engineered to last forever and could be kept running by a bush mechanic. Heck some of those 70s diesels still had a manual fuel shut off
The fuel shutoff was for cases when the electric switch from the dash failed, which should tell you something. I had to use it a few times.