A Modest Proposal: Mercedes-Benz Should Make Some Advertising Lemonade
Answer quickly, without pondering: Does Mercedes-Benz make reliable automobiles? For most of us, the immediate answer is “No.” Perhaps it’s because we’ve owned post-1995 Benzes, perhaps it’s because we’ve heard horror stories from our neighbor’s first-gen ML or W210 E-Class, perhaps it’s because it’s easy to see that recent M-B products simply don’t seem to hold up or stick around the way the old ones did.
Now imagine how your friends and family would answer the same question. Again, the “nays” are probably going to outnumber the “yays”. Thirty years ago, everybody thought that Mercedes-Benz built the best automobiles in the world. Today, very few people do. It’s common knowledge now that the three-pointed star has been affixed to plenty of cars which were underdeveloped at best and utter garbage at worst. You can’t really trust a Mercedes-Benz, can you? Not like you can trust a Lexus.
There’s only one problem with the above statements: there is a group of people who have learned, firsthand, how durable, reliable, and flat-out awesome a Nineties Benz can be. You know them, I know them…
Did you ever expect that the infamous W140 S-Class, a car so heavy that it became infamous for flat-spotting tires in showrooms, would win a 24-hour race? What about a six-cylinder W124? True, these two vehicles are considered to be from the “good old days” before the despicable W210 E-class, Alabama-built ML, and milk-jug-interior W220 S-Class, but we’re still talking about old Benzes laboring around a racetrack for a full day under some fairly oppressive conditions.
Why not do a Web campaign talking about how good, and how reliable, an old Mercedes-Benz can be? Why not let people out there know that it’s possible to take an S-Class with six-figure mileage on it and put the throttle to the floor for a solid day? If Dr. Z and company are afraid that people will associate their precious brand with rusted, damaged garbage… well, that ship sailed around the time they stopped building inline-six gasoline engines. It couldn’t hurt to take a chance.
Germans being Germans, the logical outcome of such a campaign would be to purchase an existing LeMons team and run it under the Silver Arrows banner. I think that such a course of action would be interesting, and if they used a 1999 E320, it would even be courageous. I estimate that a W210 could even win LeMons, assuming that the budget for the team and mechanics roughly equaled that of their so-far-unsuccessful Formula One effort. Perhaps Herr Schumacher himself could reprise his role as a high-speed Benz taxi driver around MSR Houston or Nelson Ledges.
What’s the worst that could happen? Well, a LeMons 500SL could launch itself into the crowd, kill like fifty people, and cause the company to quit racing for another few decades. Wait! LeMons races never have any spectators! Everything will go better than expected! And believe me, it isn’t like Mercedes-Benz hasn’t crapped all over their brand before…
More by Jack Baruth
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Another reason many American drivers focus on vehicle reliability is the risk associated with breaking down while driving through a bad neighborhood. Seems likely the typical European driver does not have to worry about this as much. Being inconvenienced is one thing, being stranded in a life-threatening situation is another. The $20,000 to $30,000 spent on the badge on the front of the vehicle isn't going to help at that point.
I was car shopping on a Saturday morning a few years ago. I visited Acura, BMW, Audi, and finally a Mercedes dealership. After a test drive of a beautiful SLK, the Mercedes salesman wanted to show off their equally beautiful service department. There were a dozen well-healed customers sitting in the customer lounge, drinking complementary espressos and lattes, talking on their cell phones, watching a flat screen T.V. or gazing through a glass wall at a service bay that resembled a NASA clean room filled with a dozen Benz's. The grinning salesman noticed the wide-eyed look on my face and asked me what I thought. I replied I thought the service department was gorgeous, but I liked the one at the Acura dealership better. The surprised salesman asked me how the Acura service department could possibly top this one. I simply replied, "The Acura service department is empty."