rev up your engines, today I'm going to
talk about BMW versus Mercedes, now in 2018 mercedes-benz was rated number 14 in
terms of reliability they were rated more on reliable than Volkswagen and
Tesla but they were rated more reliable than BMW, now these ratings always change
over time that's 2018 but still it's only 14th so it's not that great to
begin with, and to understand the history of BMW Mercedes at least here in the
United States, we go back decades BMW was a sporty car
they only sold little bitty four-cylinder ones, they were kind of a niche car
people use them for rally cars and stuff where at the same period in time
Mercedes in the United States, it was more interested in selling luxurious
comfort cars to people, the cars that I worked on back then we're generally
owned by doctors or lawyers they paid a ton of money relative to what other cars
cost and they were pretty solid built cars comfortable, they had much better
suspension than the junk that the American cars had on in those days, you
certainly paid for the quality but the quality was there, things have changed
quite a bit check BMW they still tout themselves as
the ultimate driving machine, they're not little bitty 4-cylinder engines, BMW
makes the 12 cylinder engine that is used in Rolls Royce, of course BMW owns
Rolls Royce now they've had their BMW engines in Rolls Royces for a long time
and BMW is making their cars ride better with fancy computer-controlled shock
system, much improved handling over the old ones become a more luxurious car
company and Mercedes they've got more into speed specially those AMG Mercedes
they had a lot more speed than they used to have, their still comfortable and all
but of course if you get a really souped-up AMG one it's not gonna be as
comfortable as the S series it's all luxurious, because they're going a little
bit more for speed than comfort, but in making such changes both BMW and
Mercedes over the years have become higher and higher tech cars that cost
more and more money to repair when they break,
Germans always had a prerogative towards going for unique software so it's very
hard to analyze the vehicles, unless you work on them all the time and have their
very expensive twenty thousand dollar scan tools on them, that's just how the
Germans have always been, the cars never were cheap to work on, but now they're
super expensive to work on because of their technology, and especially in the
case of BMW, they have made a combination of electronics and the overuse of
plastic parts to create problems that are even worse than the Mercedes repairs
are, cheap plastic parts are the bane of any BMW owners car over time if they
keep them, because they just start cracking, they're brittle, and they cost a
fortune to replace, last year I was working on a BMW and the plastic cooling
hose under the intake was all brittle cracked and leaking, well the old BMWs
guess what they had steel hoses there, they lasted forever, well they went to
plastic cuz it's cheaper to make them of course, and not only was that stupid a
little piece of plastic one hundred and seventy-five dollars, you had to take the
intake manifold off to replace it, so it ended up costing a whole bunch of
money for something that shouldn't have broken in the first place, here's a
story that'll show you the real problem with BMW, one of my friends was also a
mechanic and he specializes in European cars, he said hey Scotty look at that BMW
out there I just got a great deal on a used BMW from one of my customers, and I
thought huh maybe working on those things all the time is affected his mind,
about a year later I saw him in another auto parts store and I said, hey Joe
how's that BMW working out for you and he said that plastic piece of crap, I got
rid of a month ago it was costing me a fortune all the plastic kept breaking on
it, BMW seem to have more quality problems than their later model cars than
mercedes-benz does, not that Mercedes don't have problems, but they don't have
them to the degree that BMW has, now when it comes to safety in the modern BMWs
and Mercedes, they're very safe cars Mercedes and BMWs were always into safety,
last year Mercedes had one perfect 10 out of
10 for safety and BMW had perfect time for tents for safety, so
they're both very safe cars as long as all that electronic stuff works
correctly, BMWs got a little edge on that, now both BMW and Mercedes are expensive
cars there's no doubt that, hey a new 330 those things can easily top fifty two
thousand dollars and that's a four-cylinder BMW, and if you compare
various Mercedes with various BMWs you'll find that sometimes the BMW cost
more, sometimes the Mercedes cost more and of
course mercedes-benz is now pushing their c-class that costs a little bit
less and they're even going with their new a-class, new a class mercedes starts
at thirty two thousand five hundred dollars price, it's very back and forth but
if you're planning on buying one or the other
here's my real advice, I wouldn't buy either, I would lease, and I go to our
neighbors to the north Canada for this one, in Canada with BMWs most people
lease them they do not buy them, 80 something percent of the people lease bmws
in canada and i tend to agree with them, yes
normally I say leasing a car is a waste of money,
but if you buy either a new BMW or a new Mercedes they lose their value so fast
that you will actually lose less money if you lease one for a couple of years
than if you buy one and then sell it after a couple of years, Mercedes and BMW
have been pushing leases like mad and advertising for that reason, after it's off
least they'd send them to some place, sometimes they
send them to other countries and sell them there, but if you're wise you
wouldn't buy either of those cars you would lease it, so if you wanted a car
that's the driving machine maybe you'd get a BMW, or if you wanted more luxury
you buy a Mercedes, but you don't want to be in it long term because the values
dropped so much you lose so much money, and sure the leases paying a reasonably
money for those cars, but you know exactly how much money you're spending
and believe me if you bought one and then sold it when the lease was up, you
would lose so much more money, as an example I had a cost
they had an S series Mercedes is nice luxurious car there's no arguing that, the
sticker price one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars when it was eight years
old that car that went for eight thousand dollars cash
now both cars BMW Mercedes are fun to drive I love driving them once I'm done
working on a customers car, and with my own customers truthfully a lot of
them do lease the cars, their doctors lawyers and they have a deal where it's
leased through the business so it's a business expense and it's not even put
on their taxes that they have to pay their after-tax money to buy the car, the
business is leasing the car, that's why you want a lease one it's got a full
warranty on it, then you don't have to think about anything, and if the car is a lemon
what the heck you don't own it, but whatever you do don't do what I've seen
a lot of people do in the last 50 years, do not buy a high mileage use BMW or
Mercedes thinking I got a great deal because odds are it will bite you in the
rear end if you keep it any length of time, so now you know what I think about BMWs
and Mercedes, and if you're really a fan what you
should do if you want to get your hands on one of them, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!
