Originally Posted By: dogememe
Hahaha you want something that'll last to 300k and you want a BMW/Mercedes/VAG, fine, but it's gonna cost you a pretty penny to fix and maintain if you go European. I see these types of vehicles every day in our parking lot at the auto parts store here in Marin where European vehicles are more popular than in most places and plenty of them have EXPENSIVE repairs near 100k miles, and high mileage ones are RARE! Even ones that don't have any problems use oil and if you want the manufacturer-approved oils it's like $10-13/qt LOL. These are beautiful vehicles that are a pleasure to drive but I would NEVER want to own one outside of warranty.
Mobil 1 or Castrol is fine and they're on sale all the time. I'm actually probably going to do the Mobil 1 rebate with the Mobil filter, should be about $18 after rebate for 5 quarts, but mine takes 8.5. Mobil makes oil for MB, mine has a sticker under the hood recommending Mobil. They're a little more expensive that normal, but mine haven't been that expensive to own. They're certainly fun to drive.
Originally Posted By: Pelican
It all depends on how well the MB has been maintained. maintenance records are paramount in this case. MB-Audi & BMW follow a european maintenance schedule which is much more intense than what we are accustomed to, the engineers make minimal concessions to the marketing department and so they schedule for maximum performance & reliability. There are some problems with MB better to google and see what they are, if you go ahead and don't want to pay through the nose for service, find a good & reputable mechanic to service the Benz.
The GL is one of their top of the line cars, now it's the GLS in the new model. GLA is the most basic one, then GLC, GLE and GLS at the top which was GL before. I think in 2014+ they had heated and cooled cup holders! Anyway, standard maintenance is one a year with Service A or B and then whatever recommended maintenance may be, those direct injection engines seem to need more frequent spark plug changes. You can buy service packs from MB up to 80k, best deal seems to a 3 pack at the even numbered service intervals which is every 10k. Sometimes the 3 service package cost the same as one of the major B services. But if you have a cheap indy, it's probably still cheaper to go to the indy.
Anyway, you can get the VMI from the dealer, it's the Vehicle master inquiry and tells you all the work that's been done at an MB dealer. Most of the dealers will give it out, but you usually have to go in person, most don't seem to give it out over the phone. Two other main sites to check are mbworld.org and benzworld.org, those places would have a lot more details about a particular model.
Also if buying a car, I always liked MB for having a vin decoder available
www.datamb.com, you punch in the VIN and you can see what options the car has. Most dealers are clueless as to what the car actually have. Saying it has a moonroof is pretty worthless when they all have that as standard. Try this site and select features to see what option codes were available that particular year:
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/mercedes-benz/gl-class/2014/
I like the driver assistance package and lighting package. It's probably hard to find a GL450 that has other stuff like the pano roof, keyless go, parktronic, massage seats, etc unless you jump up to the GL550.
