Near where I live, the advertisements on the bus stops say "USD 500 and you ride!" because a functional car means access to work opportunities, i.e. money.
Suburban America is a design error with grave repercussions down the line, but since it was designed by and for the affluent assuming multiple vehicles per family and things like bicycle paths and public transport are either not present or just about un-usable you're going to have a problem if you don't have access to a vehicle.
But quite a few people do not have access to vehicles today (for instance: children, quite a few elderly people, everybody too poor to own cars) so maybe it's time to start fixing this problem?
Two cars for every family is long term un-sustainable, and two cars for a family without income to me sounds like it is an impossibility.
Even so, there are ways to use only one vehicle, even in a family where two people are working, figure out who keeps the car with them during the day, either drop off the other at work or at the nearest public transport hub (assuming that one exists).
That should take care of the bigger problem. Having two cars when you can't afford your food is really not good.
I find their reaction a bit strange without further context.
A Mercedes is a reliable car if it is maintained well and if you're living on food-stamps and are unemployed that value will drop very rapidly because you can no longer afford to maintain it. Once it stops running its resale value is nil, so better sell it before then.
See: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/19/top-10-cars-for-sm...
I've run this beast:
http://pics.camarades.com/v/jacques/cars/golf/
From '09 to '11 and it had more than 300K km on it by the time I was done with it (and it still brought me back more than I paid for it...).
You have to be pretty sharp when you're buying them to make sure you don't buy one that has been maintained poorly.
Fuel pump and turbo are the most important things to check.
That car cost about $750 to buy and another $200 for fixes required right after buying it to get it through the 'MOT', after that it ran without a hitch for two years.
An American car is probably better for a poor person than any German car. Sure, you may have to repair it more often, but parts and labour are a lot cheaper. Even if it costs more in total, for poor people a large number of small bills are often easier to deal with than a single large bill.
The newer diesels have insanely high injection pressures, I have a campervan that has one of these engines (the 2.5L) and I really hope that there will never be a problem with that because it will make your $3000 look like pocket change if it fails in a serious way.
In a pinch I think I'd rely on the older and much simpler models rather than to go for one of these hyper efficient versions. They seem to trade efficiency in fuel for a much shorter life-span and a higher repair bill.
The government here puts an insane premium on fuel consumption without taking into account the effect of all those fuel saving measures on the total-costs over the lifetime of the car.
At a rough guess it is a toss-up, what you gain in fuel efficiency you lose in expensive repairs.