Mercedes Benz S Class 500

I bought my 1998 S 500 L with a little under 30,000 Kms. The car was in perfect shape and fully mantained at the dealership. It also came with an amazing list of options including the rear trunk-mounted fridge, parktronic, leather/wood steering wheel, glass moonroof, bose sound system and rear & side sun screens.

I have always been a Mercedes fan and owner and this was my dream car. It has perfomed and live up to my expectarions in such a way that I also acquiered the coupe (CL 500).

Yes, being a top-of-the-line model with complex electronics and options it tends to be on the expensive side to run and maintain, but the pleasure and comfort it provides easily outweighs this issue.

The big problem is when someone buys a car with extremely high mileage and/or poor maintenance. Then it can easily become your worst nightmare.

The S 500 W140 model basically ran from 1990/1 to 1998/9 (depending on the market). The later the production date of the model, the better it would be in terms of reliability. By the 1998/9 year model most production problems were resolved. Some issues, though, were never resolved and can be a little uncomfortable to deal with:

- The air conditioning evaporator (most of them will eventually fail). They are expensive to fix since the whole dash has to be removed to access it.

- The self-closing door/trunk pump. Expensive to buy in it would not last forever. If luck is on your side it should run for about four/five years.

- The alternator (it will always give some type of problem).

- The rear self-leveling suspension (also prone to fail).

- Some transmissions (especially early production five-speed autos) tend to be problematic.

Early production models (1991/2/3 and 4) had aditional issues a such as front axle vibrations, folding mirror get stucked, electric windows failure, sound system power amplifier breakdowns, door seals issues, air conditioning electronic control modules and door lock vacuum pumps.

On the other hand, the S 500 has one of the best rides ever, with an strong engine that will last forever and interior fit and finish of first rate. Quality of materials and innovations such as the double glazed side windows are unique and nice to live with.

Few cars at the time matched the imposing stance of the S 500 and many consider this model the last Mercedes ever built whith great engineering reagardless of cost.

I purchased a 1999 Mercedes S500, bought from a Mercedes dealer, with full service history and Mercedes warranty. It had only done 50k miles when I purchased it 16 months ago and I was hoping for a reliable car that could take the 30,000+ miles a year I tend to do.

Starting with reliability, so far the car has had more than 28 faults in the 20 months, including 3 roadside breakdowns leaving the car unroadworthy. The faults have ranged from suspension (4 bushes, air compressor, compressor relay all needing replacement) to electrics (3 x door mirror and central mirror adjustment, mirror heater, 4 x steering position adjustment, battery, phone, traffic indicator), engine (Engine Management system: O2 flow sensor, air mass sensor and fuel sender, flywheel sensor), heating (climate control unable to maintain warm temperature at speed) and bodywork (paint peeling on the bonnet). All this on a car that has primarily been used for sedate motorway driving!

Design/Build Quality:

It would appear that there are some significant design issues with suspension bushes failing between 50k and 80k miles (I don't know if any failed before 50k). Perhaps the suspension is under-designed for the weight of the vehicle. The fuel sender is a known issue that is claimed to be exacerbated by unleaded fuel. In general Mercedes cars are quite expensive to purchase, and particularly the S-Class. Normal expectation is that the higher end cars should be over-designed but this does not seem to be the case.

The wide range and frequency of faults, give me the impression that the build quality of the S-Class does not align with reasonable expectations. This coupled with the very high maintenance and part costs (e.g. £150 for a car battery, about £300 for a set of spark plugs) make the prospect of buying a used S-Class untenable.

It was suggested by the Mercedes, when complaining about the faults, that the S-Class is a complex car and I should therefore expect faults. Strangely, if this were true, we should be expecting 747 s to be falling out of the sky on a daily basis. It could be argued that if Mercedes cannot design, build and maintain a complex vehicle they should not be selling them. They should in fact, stick to something simpler that they can operate.

Customer Service:

As stated above, the car was purchased with a full Mercedes warranty and their breakdown protection (Mobilo-Life). It has a full service history, was previous owned by Mercedes and operated as a Fleet car. It has also been serviced by Mercedes Dealers ever since.

Each time a fault has occurred the vehicle has been returned to the dealer to have the source of the fault determined. In general, however, the dealer does not have the required parts, the car needs to be collected, the parts ordered, re-booked and taken in again. By a quick rule of thumb for 20 faults over 16 months, equates to 40 bookings and 80 return trips to the garage in 16 months! To put it another way about a man month of time, just driving to and from the dealer!

For a premier badge like Mercedes, for whom people are expected pay a premium, one would expect that this amount of faults would be totally unacceptable to them and that they should be pulling out the stops to resolve the situation. Not the case, the faults have been logged with Mercedes directly throughout the period, whose unceasing response is to talk to your dealer - even when it is evident that the dealer is not able to resolve the underlying problem.

In essence Mercedes will not take responsibility for building an unacceptably poor vehicle and offer no resources to put it into an acceptable state. Sadly it is left to the customer to live with and arrange for each fault to be repaired reactively without any strategy for improving the overall situation.

Mobilo-life roadside breakdown assistance has been used on a couple of occasions. On one of these occasions, the car was only a couple of miles from a Mercedes dealer and managed to limp (with 5 of the 8 cylinders shutdown) to a dealer. Mobilo-life said because the car had made it to a garage it was therefore not broken down and they could not provide a vehicle unless the car was driven (against the recommendations of the technician) away and left on the side of the road. Clearly this is a ludicrous situation and would have resulted in damage to the engine and catalytic converter, an additional towing fee to Mobilo-life and substantial inconvenience to the driver. At the end of the day the problem was again left to the customer to sort out with no transport with both the dealer and Mercedes blaming each other. It then took a further 24 hours of phone calls to obtain a temporary hire car.

It seems that buying a used car from Mercedes is entirely at the owner s risk and no support can be expected if things go wrong. Given that the S-Class is one of their flagship models, one wonders how the rest of their models fair. I guess these sorts of reasons is why Mercedes are dropping so rapidly in customer satisfaction surveys like JD Power.

From the perspective of safe, reliable transportation, the Mercedes S Class is the best of the best. With five star crash ratings in every category, this car is beefy and strong; if you have to be in The Big One, this is the car to be in, particularly with the myriad of lane-weaving SUVs driven by folks more focused on their phone call than not running into you. The handling is good enough you forget it is nearly three tons surrounding you. The trunk is big enough for the Sopranos to use for burying several families worth of trouble; we have had half a football team and gear in the car without looking like clowns at a circus. The seats are large leather chairs that fit even someone two meters tall, as I am, comfortably. Hard to believe, but mine is coming up on 400,000 miles, or over 15 times circumnavigating the world, and the engine has never been apart, although I am on the second transmission. Like a football player in a tuxedo, these cars look sharp and serious at the same time. And these cars don't suffer from the electronic bugs that the next generation S class has been wounded by. Last, but not least, is that with 343 horse engine, this is a Q ship, a hot rod that melts into traffic and never gets a second look, but can cruise all day long without straining, and with every seat taken inside; at 80MPH, the car feels alive and awake, like it could do this forever.

I fancied an Aston Martin DB7 whilst on my search for the right spec car for my needs but cannot complain or question my choice of an S-Class 500L as it is a whole lot of car. A good car especially when you consider that from new it cost a little over £89,000 but I paid a little under £17,000. It feels so good to drive and discs and pads cost no more than the same for a Ford or Vauxhall.

2001 Mercedes Benz S Class 500 Executive Car bought for £43k worth £23k after 15 months ownership (depreciated faster than I was paying for it!). Car delivered from another dealer with 19 faults had to take delivery as they had already taken my BMW p/x ...rejected the car back to the dealers (MB of Chichester)took 3 months before all the faults were fixed....various electrical faults ..can't trust the "malfunction" computer as it often malfunctions itself? Service bills ridiculous...eats brake discs but doesn't tell you they are worn until it's too late!

Dealers a rip-off and this is after they all had to re-apply for their franchises!

MB Quality what a joke!!!

i own a merk s class 500 1993 and i would say that is one of the best cars ever, it has beutiful interior, and has alot of torke,

it has a 32 v engine, its 5 lt and it has 400 hp ... ITS AMAZING