Quote:
Originally Posted by ben721364
What model year SLK did you have? How long did you own it and how many miles did you put on it v. the 370Z?
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Ben,
FWiW, I got my wife one of the first ML-320s in 98. We used to enjoy driving around that first year, spotting maybe 1-3 other MLs a week. Then the vehicle got too popular.
Another issue we had was that routine warranty & maintenance work always included about 12-15 pages of other stuff than we had ordered, apparently chargebacks to the Mercedes factory for various recall campaigns. A lot of the time, we were pretty sure there was nothing wrong with what was being "fixed".
When we got to the end of the 50K warranty period, the string of $700 bills started arriving ... aimed at US. Mass air sensor? $700. Inside rear latch defective? (We never tried to open the hatch from the inside.) $700. A simple oil change & filter was at least $200. And you couldn't get 3rd-party work for something as simple as brakes pads, because they all said Mercedes controlled the supply of parts.
The happiest day for my wife was the day she got this car for her 50th birthday. The second-happiest was the day we traded it away.
We like the SLK a lot, but it's another 40 miles to the next-nearest Mercedes dealer, and it's just too much to pay for a car that looks like a Hyundai. My wife's happy in her current Acura TL. I'm happy in my Z. And we both fight over who gets to use the Honda Element.
