Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!
Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.
Will she buy another MB?
Possibly. Other than the issues (which the ext warranty covered), she liked the car. She was looking at the new C-class that just came out within the last year, but in the end decided she wanted an SUV, and she happened to like the Audi one better. Am I expecting Audi to be more reliable than MB? No. Her purchasing decisions aren't really based on reliability.
The new C class for 2015 has a lot of options that previously were only available on the E class, I guess with the CLA, it went up market a little bit. They sorta look like an S class, similar taillights. I think Audi is probably worse than Mercedes or BMW, at least that's been their reputation, but everyone has been getting better lately.
I don't think it's possible to drive a car for 3 years without doing some maintenance to it. For instance standard stuff would be brake fluid flush every 2 years, transmission fluid change every 40k, then there's also the differential and transfer case. Eventually things like ball joints, tie rods, struts, brakes, will also go, but those are just normal maintenance items, but they won't be cheap if you do them at the dealer. Some things like struts might be covered under an extended warranty.
As for putting money away every month, I suppose that makes sense for the 2/3's of the people that live paycheck to paycheck, the other 1/3 just have the money if anything happens.