Mercedes-Benz E-Class comes with a 4-year or 50,000 mile warranty in the United States, which actually has pretty high level consumer protection when it comes to cars. However, in my country, the E-Class has a 2-year warranty and I get the feeling that the situation might be the same in many of the other European countries. That's not that much of a warranty for a car starting at 48,071 euros (53,996 USD).
I think most people prefer to pay someone else, luxury marque or not. Not everyone has the skills, knowledge and tools to do maintenance beyond topping up the washer fluid.
> They are ok with paying someone else to do it
Yep, I'd rather pay someone that knows what they're doing - that doesn't mean I want to get ripped off though. BTW, a tip for car owners - always haggle on service costs. I've been a car owner for 20 years, and every time I've asked, the dealer has offered a discount, just because I asked.
> cars come with long warranties these days anyway
At least in the UK, the luxury car makers (e.g. BMW, Mercedes) come with a 3 year warranty, same as they have for a long time. This is short by comparison to Kia's 7 year warranty, and I seem to recall Hyundai offers a 5 year warranty.
Of course, if you need to actually claim on the warranty, that's when the fun and games might start... I've never actually had to claim on the BMW and Mercedes I've owned, but I've had a hell of a time getting pissed about by Nissan and just assumed other makers did the same.
When I was working as a mechanic, we had a few customers with land rovers (most of our business was trucks & SUVs). The land rover owners had to pay roughly 2x for everything, simply because the cars are so much more time consuming to work on. And from family members who have owned them, BMW & Mercedes are just as bad, albeit slightly more reliable. If it is time consu3and a PITA, the customer will be charged more.
Consider that the cost of man years of engineering is essentially irrelevant to the cost of a vehicle.
(of course the total engineering costs are going to be significant, I'm talking about incremental costs of spending time thinking about how to make vehicles a bit nicer here or there)
These people are getting exactly what they want from the luxury cars that are currently available. If a manufacturer spent money on making its luxury cars more durable and easier to maintain, they would need to raise prices and would then lose sales to other brands.
In other words, this situation is a result of consumer preferences, not a conspiracy by manufacturers to cut quality. And that applies to a lot of things, not just cars.