I can add, Roland, that my brother who had a foreign cars repair shop on
Long Island in New York owns a lot to Mercedes. Mercedes made my brother a
millionare. There always was a lot of MBs at his shop waiting for repairs.
These were cars leased by the mostly rich Jews, who charged the lease to
companies they owned. They didn't care about cost of the repairs which ran
in thousands of dollars.
His shop had 2 factory trained mechanics and my brother had all MB required
special tools.
The cars were 99% gasoline.
Nobody in the shop liked VWs and, if customer did come, he was given the
addresses instead of service. The mechanics hated VW, particularly new
Beetle. Once Lexus came, the MB service business started to decline. The
customers who now leased Lexuses were stopping at the shop just to say hello
and to praise Lexus quality. The only complain was this. They would attempt
to restart already running engine which was super quiet. Later Lexus
installed the tachometer to let the driver to see that the engine had
started.
My brother owned many MBs. What he is driving now? Lexus 470! Ark

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roland" <syncronicity1@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: VW quality & Mercedes FI & Japanese FI - was - Massive
Maintenance and cost

> "Mercedes and VW were near or at the bottom of the list.  "
>
> Well, my father had a very good friend (both Germans) who owned one of the
> premier Mercedes repair shops in this metro area.  Made a very good
> living.
> He told my father to never buy a Mercedes, they were junk, you will spend
> twice the purchase price in repairs.
>
> Roland