Originally Posted by Imhotep Evil

I never said MB should have only have luxury and confort. Over the decades MB cars have comed from modest handling cars to good/very good handling cars, (a lot) better the (overwhelming) majority.
Nevertheless they are not BMWs, nor should they (try to) be.

Look for examle the stupid TV stunt MB made.
Insted of just saying, MBs are amongst the safest in the world, MB is an inovator/pioneer in safety they went on to make a big fuss that they are the
king, emperor and God of safety. As if they were trying to sell Volvos.

So what I'm saying is that there is a diference between
getting rid of weaknesses/ adding other secundary atributes to a brand and
stealling the identity of some else (making their primary/first and foremost atributes your primary/first and formost atributes, even at the expense of old ones ).

Basicaly MBs should be amongs other (traditional atributes), (very) good handling and (very) safe cars, but let BMWs be "Ultimate driving machine" and Volvos be "Safety".




So what you're telling me is that MB has created some "Ultimate Driving Machines". Well then I going to love the cars and hate Mercedes Benz.

But now here is my IMO.
I belive that this cars while fine are/(will be) overpriced (from a consumer perspective).
Why:
- MB outsells BMW when it comes to cars over 60000-70000 euros/dollars
- these cars have a good reputation
- to compensate for the loss of revenue due to decline in core models (C and E klasse)
- to mantain/improve profit (margins) caused also by rises in raw materials
- and let's not forget the time and money wasted on Smart, Maybach and the SLR.
- now since bringing the new C and E and improving productivity/flexibility cannot be done over night and without sacrifices, MB will IMO milk some of its consumers (overprice some cars (probably costing over 60000 USD/Euros) in some markets), for a while at least.