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Comment by piperswe | Hacker News Reader

But if you do maintain them in that certain way, they can be brilliantly reliable. Problem is, many people (especially in America) don't. And getting the proper fluids for them can be a pain in the ass in America, since BMW LL oil is basically impossible to get anywhere except dealerships and specialty websites.

I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German brands, that's why they're used as taxis in many countries.

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Chrysler has had some of the least reliable for most of my entire lifetime and Mercedes shares a parent company and presumably a lot of parts with them.

Both of my WK2 Jeep grand Cherokee’s have been reliable and they share parts with the old MLs. The parts they share are pretty silly to consider reliability, control arms, 5-speed transmission (until 2014), and some other random parts with Mercedes stamped on it. Considering Chrysler transmissions were terrible I’m glad they used Benz then ZFs.

Mercedes is owned by Daimler

Chrysler (30 out of 30) by Stellantis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis) along with: Fiat, Alfa Romeo (unranked), Dodge (21) RAM (15) Jeep (26)

Whoa I totally messed that up! I didn’t even know that they dropped Chrysler in 2007 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Group)

> I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German brands, that's why they're used as taxis in many countries.

Oh, my sweet summer child. I can tell you still have fond memories of the pre-2010 Mercedes era ...

Who's gonna tell him?

This is an insulting and patronizing reply as you are implying something you know (or think you know) is common knowledge that only GP would not know.

Please share what you believe happened in 2010 to Mercedes to cause the flip from an ideal choice for taxis to this consumer reports ranking.

2010 was when they started using motors from other (cheap) brands like Renault for a lot of models on big scale. Before that you could drive your Mercedes up to like 400,000 km and more and still get money for it or at least sell it to development countries to be used as a - mostly reliable - taxi for example. Been there, done that. Nowadays getting a newer model to 200,000 km before its "end" is the exception rather than the norm. And that's just their cost-down strategy on the motors ...

The Renault engines are used in the entry level cars like the A, CLA and B class. The kind of Mercedes used as taxis (E and S class) will not be impacted by that change.

It's less that I have fond memories and more that I know little about M-B other than general sentiment of other car enthusiasts. I'm a big BMW fan myself, and I'm perfectly fine with seeing BMW taking M-B's place as the "reliable" German brand, I just didn't know that was happening to this extent.

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