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Big, big article in this Saturday's Motoring section on Mercedes reliabilty entitled 'Catch a Falling Star'. Fascinating read.
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I read "Catch a Falling Star" and was very surprised at how poor Mercedes Benz cars had become. It does seem they have lost a lot of their prestige due to many basic faults due to poor design and construction, made worse by below par service departments and an almost non-existant MB complaints department.
There were certainly lots of intentions mentioned of how things are improving, but not all of them have started to be fully implemented for the customers benefit.
I loved the two case studies where one SLK owner had managed to get his money back so he bought a Lexus, and the other had a fleet of 5 Mercs, a series of problems with one is now resulting in possibly changing the fleet to another brand.
I have to ask, why did things get so bad so quickly?
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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>>I have to ask, why did things get so bad so quickly?>>
Dipping too many toes in too many other car buying areas rather than sticking to core values.
BAe had the same problem when it took on Rover - it knew little or nothing about manufacuturing cars and quickly reverted back to the world it knew best.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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I may be wrong, and I am I am sure I shall be corrected, if I am! Was there not a recent dealer shake-up in which a lot of smaller dealers were deprived of their franchise. Certainly in North Wales one dealership, a 'family' type garage with old values, that just happened to have a Mercedes franchise, lost it is the shuffle.
As a further point, a lot of design seems to have gone toward looking good but with out being practical. Examples of the sort of thing I mean are bumpers coming off to change headlight bulbs (actually Audi) and A class engine out to get at diesel glow plugs; I am sure the list goes on!
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A MB dealer manager told me a while ago (3 yrs?) that they were 'rationalising' the dealer network starting with terminating contracts which caused a lot of resentment amongst dealers including those expecting to be reappointed. You can imagine the motivation for this being the setting of certain standards not achieved in the old network, but it is surely a recipe for unhelpful disruption and a concerted pusrsuit of service and repair income from the newly appointed dealers to recover their no doubt huge investment in showrooms and service facilities.
This is hearsay, and surmise on my part - it would be interesting to hear the inside story.
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I recall reading in Germany since 1999:
1. comments by German owners of increasing faults and niggles;
2. transferring production of RHD vehicles to S.Africa
3. proposals to restructure European dealer networks so that more cars were sold through manufacturer-owned outlets.
Those are just examples.
Other restructuring "strategic" moves and were also proposed.
All aimed at extracting maximum value from the consumer,
with the mission of "total customer satisfaction" being replaced by a policy of "accepted casualty levels".
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I know most of the dealers were rebranded into "Mercedes Benz of XYZ town". However, there are a few exceptions in the Thames Valley that still trade under their original names
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Yes - mine came from Greenoaks which has several dealerships in the Thames Valley, but owned by M-B I think.
They did a good job of selling and delivering: nothing wrong so far, but that's only a few hubdred miles. Nothing, but nothing, went wrong with the previous Audi in 33,000 miles.
I could have been lucky so far: I had seven reliable Renaults in a row over 20 years, the last a Laguna V6 that had only one minor failure on 97,000 miles.
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Sorry but I have to disagree with StuartLi when he says it went wrong when they decided to dip their toes into too many other car areas. It is nothing like BAe who had no Car experience - you have to remember that Mercedes WAS the best car maker on the planet and stuck with cars when it bought Chrysler and set up Smart. BAe knew nothing about cars. What Mercedes did wrong was decide to reduce the quality of their product to make more money because it thought their cars were over engineered.
What a foolish mistake that was. You just could not imagine any of the far east brands deciding to do that. VW are going the same way but more discreetly than Mercedes (who publicly announced this as a strategy). The Japenese brands have stuck to their core values of putting the customer first and that is why Toyota are now fast approaching becoming the number 1 car maker in the world. Anyone who has any knowledge of the Toyota philososphy would understand this. They strive to standardise everything they make and eliminate variation in all they do. That is also why Jap cars come with so much kit - not because they have to try and sell them - it is because they can then make all their cars the same i.e. standardise and eliminate variation = quality & reliability. Most of Merc's recent problems have been to do with reduced quality and heavy warranty repairs on optional equipment such as their brake by wire system on the E class (which they have now dropped). Unfortunatley it will be 20 years before Mercedes will turn this reputation round.
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On the same sort of lines as mentioned by Type S i vaguely remember a quote from a high up member of VW staff used at a Toyota training seminar a while back
"Toyota would like to have the perceived build quality of VW whilst VW would like to have the actual build quality of Toyota."
I can't remember the exact details (i rarely pay attention in those kind of things!) but you get the general idea.
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I think what went wrong with MB is that sometime around 1993 the company (along with one or two others in Germany) was persuaded to start operating in an 'Anglo-Saxon' fashion. Up until that point the company had basically been run by engineers, who designed the car and then asked the accountants to figure out how a profit could be made from it.
Subsequently, the accountants took over and a lot of bright young business & marketing graduates with MBA's from American institutions turned up. They figured out what a suitable selling price should be, deducted what the shareholders wanted out of it, and then told the engineering to try and build a car with what was left over. They also had lots of bright ideas about outsourcing and 'leveraging the brand'.
A friend of mine was an MB-specialist for many years (now retired) and tells me that there was a noticable drop in quality around the mid-1990's as cheaper materials and production options were employed.
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Was there not a recent dealer shake-up in which a lot of smaller dealers were deprived of their franchise.
Yes, it's mentioned in the DT article
tinyurl.com/jdjwy
"Dealerships were changed or reappointed after reapplying for their areas."
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>>>>the accountants took over >>>>
This was the crux of the whole problem along with a gullible management who believed that the once great company was invincible.
There is no question that during their zenith years in the late 80`s and early 90`s, models like the W124 reigned supeme in the market place and were nigh unburstable and capable of extremely high mileages without major mechanical problems.
To rebuild this reputation will now take many years to rekindle confidence in the buying public, particularly the rust problems experienced (even with the S Class), which stays in the memory for many years. Remember the impact with Lancia when they introduced the Beta 30 odd years ago, and which forced them to withdraw completely from the U.K. market.!!!!
I believe M.Benz have now turned the corner, but the memories of poor build along with their fiasco with their dealerships and appalling customer relationships are going to take some considerable time to return to their former status quo.
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I read an (admittedly American) article a little while ago that showed that the Chrysler/Dodge of Daimler Chrysler was now producing good profit, whilst the Mercedes side was losing money.
MTC
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Whenever this topic comes up, I always relate to this story.
A while ago, my Dad helped a mate out by driving "executive cars" for a few weeks. These included a Viano LWB (really cool!) and 2 Merc E320 CDIs with sequential number plates so in all liklihood built at the same factory.
Both E-Classes were on 04 plates and the faults on these relatively new cars (it was only the year before last he drove them) :
* Melted Xenon headlamp and glass surrounding it. The cover had bubbled and melted into the headlight assembly thus...
* Flaking most of the paint off the front bumper
* One of the buttons on the "dongle" completely collapsed
* Extremely sluggish autobox on one of them although it had done 70,000 in less than a year
* A Diesel leak from somewhere
* Service light couldn't be reset
* Centre console wasn't aligned properly
That's about it. Now I don't want to sound smug, but my lowly Ford has done nearly 78,000 miles - is 6 years old and the worst thing that's ever gone wrong on it is the coil pack. Other than that, the only other "non service" type things that have been replaced have been the wheel bearings.
I'm sure those Mercs were nearly 40 grand when new. Dunno what mine was - probably 12.
Don't get me wrong - the Mercs were superb cars and I'd have still had one but after I sat in a 11 year old Lexus GS, it made me realise what I, and a hell of a lot of people are missing out on.
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