A few months ago I ordered an Uber Black in Bangkok and the driver showed up in a C300 AMG. I know it's not a high-end model (~50k USD), but I was shocked at how cheap the entire car felt. The leather is worse than the one used in base VW models, the armrests are pathetically small, visibility is bad. I'd 100% prefer to be a passenger in a Corolla or Camry.

Due to import nuances, they do all sorts of shenanigans in TH for cars. The one you have gotten may have very little to do with Mercedes.

The US made models seem to be the worst ones.

Sounds about right. No wonder mb decided to make S klasse only in Germany

There is no c300 AMG (That I know of) The AMG badge was likely fake.

They built that reputation on merit. But for the past 10 years they focused a lot on profits. Ask any mechanic and no one in his right mind would recommend getting one. Unless you don't mind paying frequent high fees for repairs.

Nothing happened. They have always had a terrible reputation for quality, and the results show it. People buy it for the brand name, and that's about it.

Tell that to the all the ~80s w118's etc. around the world still working as taxis and running off vegetable oil

the 80s started 40 years ago.

If my calculations are correct, 40 years is actually less than always

This comment doesn’t say anything about the maintenance/repair cost to keep those cars running.

They're (were?) a popular choice in very poor countries due to their reliability. They did used to be built to a higher standard. The story I heard which I have no idea about the truth of, is that competition from lexus coming along in the 2000s made merc more price conscious, and reliability suffered as a result.

That's terribly untrue (or relates to particular market). Mercedes of 80-20x were one of most reliable on market, but unfortunately quality tumbled sharply.

I have driven lots of them in 90s-20s and thought it were the best cars. And it were.

My old W126 was an amazingly well built car. Very durable and reliable, extremely long lasting, very comfy, interesting to drive, and amazingly safe compared to other cars of that era. Mine was previously owned by a couple who just did bare-minimum maintenance and drove it 120k km over their 6 years of ownership. The car was 24 years old when they got it, and 30 years old when I bought it. I drove it many more years, and the only repairs I needed to do were fixing age related leaks, and replacing one relay.

The W126 was a fairly simple car though, compared to their modern offerings, and it was built under a philosophy of building the best car regardless of cost.

My W140 was a also a well made car, great quality in materials and mechanical fundamentals, but it was too complicated and quite a bit more problematic for me.

Modern Mercedes-Benz cars don't seem as distinguished or well built as their offerings from the 1980s. With that said, my C216 CL-class is a very well built car in terms of materials and general attention to detail; it's just too complicated with hurts its overall reliability (though the powertrain is decently solid).

It's well-known that the better a manufacturer's Formula 1 racecars do, the worse their road cars. And Mercedes were the dominant team from 2014 to 2020.

"Well-known?" The top F1 team is manufactured by Honda and Honda is near the top of this Consumer Reports lists...

I had an older one (W210) for a while and have to say the driving experience is amazing - the words tank and vault come to mind. I also mostly worked on it myself and this older model was very maintainable and well thought generally - the only exceptions were the pusher cables on the sunroof and the insanely-buried evaporator coil. I've also driven the Car2Go Mercedes models and even though they were the cheapest Mercedes, they still drove very well imo. I miss driving Mercedes cars.

CR poll asks about any problems faced. Phone didn’t connect to the multimedia unit? That’s a problem.

Not saying MB quality hasn’t changed but given the large feature set the problem surface area is also very large. More opportunities for owners to find issues.

By comparison, Lexus uses tried and tested old technology to the point it’s boring to own. But it’s super reliable.

2nd thing not captured here: not all car models are equal. The lower end Mercs and other premium manufacturers models aren’t built to the same standards by my experience. There’s a difference in quality of a German car made in Germany and a German car made in Mexico. The higher end models used to be made in Germany (not sure if that’s still the case).

All of this affects this rating. You might be fine buying an E class but the experience of owning a CLA might be shit.

It was the greatest vehicle back in days. Have driven quite a number of those and all were very enjoyable.

Regrettably quality deteriorated quickly.