Hilarious excerpt from Mercedes S 500 review

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My 2001 Lesabre is totaled from the deer hit, and while perusing the ads for another car, I saw an ad for a mint 2001 Mercedes S 500. I know the reputation they have for expensive maintenance and repairs, so I though I would check out some owner's reviews and came across this...

"Given the multitude of buttons and the lack intuition with most of them, it is nearly impossible to make a selection without taking your eyes from road. In times of heavy traffic, it's dangerous - so you end-up tolerating the auto selections set by the 'technologies designed in', until you get to your own driveway where you can spend the rest of the evening in the vain attempt to reset every [censored] button. Simplicity and safety are synonymous. I look forward to the self driving cars, so you just say the name of your psychiatrist and bingo, if you're lucky you'll get there before he takes his own life - found dead, sitting in HIS Mercedes Benz with the owners manual in his lap; handwritten notes all around, engine still running, and a flashing light saying 'start again'!"
 
You aren't actually considering an S500... The early 00's models were awful. Airmatic suspension, finicky ignition locks/keys (VERY EXPENSIVE), failing nav screens. No thanks!
 
How about another Buick? Either a Park Ave, etc. Just go on Autotrader or other largest online car finder site in CA and fill in the appropriate search criteria. For keywords I would fill in "original owner". Many of those seem to be in very good condition.

Link for car below

 
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"You aren't actually considering an S500... "

No... not really. Caught my eye though, beautiful luxury car, and this one appears to be mint. I know my family budget would be much better off with a used Camry (sigh).
 
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"How about another Buick?"

Probably what I will buy, can't really complain about my ownership experience with them... the eye wanders sometimes though
laugh.gif
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I like the 2001 Lesabre, from 1997 to 2003 GM made the 4T65E transmissions with a 4th gear shaft
that had undardened splines that would tear out! No fourth gear! not driveable!

Cheap GM finally hardened these parts as replacements and in years after 2003.
That's a terrible gamble with customer's cars and lives!

If you get another GM check these PDFs out. Note the GM 6 speeds 6T70 & 75 have as many problems
with GM internally referring to GEN I, II, & III iterations! Sad!

GM 4T65-E COMMON TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS
https://app.box.com/s/n3eaao2pzopusd3bx8qrd7xmgaibj3n1

GM 4T65-E TRANSMISSION UPGRADE PARTS
https://app.box.com/s/drsf61akkxu6bw2a2qcnl1ajuhgkh9hx

HOW GM DEALERS AVOID TRANSMISSION REPAIRS
https://app.box.com/s/rjmdo7p32jtv630a5i7qzaozzr9o98oq

Now that I know and have fixed a few in our little fleet and can scan Tranny codes, any
replacements will be the same, why? 'cause now I know all the bugs and got a few McGyver fixes
in hand! I don't wanna start all over with any new platforms and trannies for at least 10 years!
 
This thread about impending Buick ownership caught my eye. And yes, I thought the OP's excerpt was quite funny; especially since I was scared away by a fine looking Benz wagon's array of electronic nonsense. The kicker was the automatically shifting (L to R) of the pressure applied to the seat bolsters during spirited driving. I couldn't get them to harden one way or another.
Pods of buttons mounted to stalks reaching out from under the seats of a reasonably young car with 150K miles?, no thank you.

To help you ease into your next Buick:
I've helped a neighbor with this or that while he went through 3 Buicks; a '91, a '93 and a '95, (pretty sure).
The seemingly rapid turnover is because he trashes any mechanical thing.

Of his Buicks I gotta say I was impressed positively.
All were solid....satisfyingly uniform....TOTALLY highway worthy (as 99% of his driving is 250 mile Interstate blasters).
Who's got anything bad to say about the 3800 (series II, I think)?

AND, in his case, they house breeding spiders and snakes well before his impoverished neighbors buy them.
Otherwise, I'd never care about Buick or otherwise.

Get another Buick. Drive a Mercedes in Heaven after you're dead.
 
Originally Posted By: Kira

This thread about impending Buick ownership caught my eye. And yes, I thought the OP's excerpt was quite funny; especially since I was scared away by a fine looking Benz wagon's array of electronic nonsense. The kicker was the automatically shifting (L to R) of the pressure applied to the seat bolsters during spirited driving. I couldn't get them to harden one way or another.
Pods of buttons mounted to stalks reaching out from under the seats of a reasonably young car with 150K miles?, no thank you.

To help you ease into your next Buick:
I've helped a neighbor with this or that while he went through 3 Buicks; a '91, a '93 and a '95, (pretty sure).
The seemingly rapid turnover is because he trashes any mechanical thing.

Of his Buicks I gotta say I was impressed positively.
All were solid....satisfyingly uniform....TOTALLY highway worthy (as 99% of his driving is 250 mile Interstate blasters).
Who's got anything bad to say about the 3800 (series II, I think)?

AND, in his case, they house breeding spiders and snakes well before his impoverished neighbors buy them.
Otherwise, I'd never care about Buick or otherwise.

Get another Buick. Drive a Mercedes in Heaven after you're dead.


That's the dynamic seats. There's an air pump with all sorts of hoses that pressurize them. I guess if it's not working, either the pump is bad or you have an air leak in the hose. The thing with MB is that you need a Star/Xentry diagnostic system or some other specialized scanner that does MB specific codes in order to do a lot of the trouble shooting. Anyway, the dynamic seat is fun to play with but not really that useful. Maybe if you're on the track or something. It does have a massage function which I also like to use. The old one doesn't look too bad, looks like there's a set of controls for the duel climate control and the rest are the usual stuff. There's also lots of stuff that got switched to the display so you don't even need to play with the controls on the dash, a lot of it you can get at from the steering wheel, at least on the later models. But yeah, airmatic and SBC brakes are probably the worse parts of an old MB. Those were high end items and mine is a more lower end E class which didn't come with those and I didn't want those. Seems like lots of those go on sale when the airmatic goes as the compressor or air shocks are about 1k per corner and even aftermarket is about $500, even if you send them out to be rebuilt, it's still $400. Still even on a regular car, a strut goes for at least $100-$200 so they're like 2x-3x more on parts.
 
I bought a Mercedes, tolerated repairing the numerous features the car has, and got the itch to own a German car out of my system. I can now move on to more sensible cars.
 
I had the early 60's to late 60's MB, ran great all the time and a joy to work
on.

But I won't touch any MB after 1985. Don't wanna pay for premium gas or expensive parts!

Been there done that!
 
I don't think the parts are that bad. What I realized is that the local dealership actually marks up prices beyond list. I had a radiator hose leak and it listed for $60 at the dealership. Called one up place and they told me was $80, another one further away had it for $60. It listed online for $60 and if I had waited, it would have been $40. I didn't think $60 was too bad a price for an upper radiator hose. Most of the time if I can wait, I either order it online or get it from rockauto/amazon. There's a few things that are expensive to get fixed like the audio gateway or the EIS, but there are companies out there that will rebuild them for about half the price of a new one. You just have to send it out to them and wait to get it back. Those aren't very common failures though and I haven't had to do it to mine yet.

Anyway, I like all the options the car has, most of them have been reliable, haven't had to fix parktronic or the pano roof, just had to lube it so far. I'm itching to get a 2014+, they had collision prevention assist along with park assist, but they're still in the 25-30k range used so maybe I'll wait another year or two. They've had adaptive cruise control (distronics) since 2003 I think, but it was never very common and I hardly ever saw a car that had it as an option for sale, but the more recent years, it's much more common so I'd like to get one that has that too.
 
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