So That’s What They Mean by German Engineering!

I’ve enjoyed driving my 1998 Mercedes E-430 . I bought it, new, because of its handling characteristics, even though Mercedes tend to have poorer-than-average repair records. It was a reasonable trade-off.

Until now.

Yesterday the car started making some funny noises while Barbara was driving it. She ended up leaving it in Palo Alto, from where I drove it this morning to a Mercedes service shop. Predictably, the symptoms weren’t apparent/audible when I started the car up for the service tech. So we took it for a test drive.

We didn’t manage to go more than 200 feet before the drive train suffered a terminal, catastrophic failure. Loud noises, sounds of metal getting jammed and twisted, violent lurches, and then a total failure of all motive power on the drive wheels.

It turns out something came apart in the transmission, and not only gummed up the works but also ground itself into little bits of metal that distributed themselves throughout the system. Necessitating a complete transmission replacement.

I am thankful this all happened under controlled conditions and at slow speeds. Barbara was on the freeway shortly before she noticed the first signs of trouble, and I can only imagine what might have happened if the transmission had destroyed itself at highway speeds. I’m sure there are fail-safes in the design…but I’m also sure those fail-safes were developed by the same people who designed and built a transmission that could destroy itself with very little advance warning (an aside: I have to laugh at the incredible “vehicle monitoring system” in the Mercedes. It loudly alerted me every time I started the car when a $1.00 dashboard light bulb was burned out…but failed to provide any warning of a $5,500 transmission about to die a violent death).

Since replacing the transmission will cost between 70% and 120% of the car’s fair market value we are now in the market for a new car. I have no idea what we’ll end up buying, since I haven’t been paying attention to the new car market. I wasn’t anticipating having to buy one.

Actually, that’s not quite true: I do know one thing about our new car.

There’s absolutely no chance whatsoever that it will be a Mercedes. Nor will any future car that I purchase.

So much for German engineering.

1 thought on “So That’s What They Mean by German Engineering!”

  1. Mark,

    So glad to hear the nobody was hurt. I have never heard of something on a car fail so drastically as what you described. Barbara was wise not to continue driving after hearing those “funny noises”! BMW maybe? Or a good old American car…or a Honda.

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