rev up your engines, today's question
comes from Benny Smith who says Scotty are the Mercedes that they make and sell in
Germany and Europe better than the ones that they sell in the United States, yes I
believe they are, and to understand why look at a little history, when I was a
young mechanic in the 60s, Mercedes Benzs were built like tanks, really
solid reliable vehicles, but they were all made in Germany, but today at least
as of 2017, fifty five point six percent of the Mercedes made are made outside of
Germany, I've often made videos saying hey don't buy one of these luxury
Mercedes in the United States, they're endless money pits, they have horrible
resale value, and people from Europe say, well Scotty we've had these
Mercedes in our family for decades and they still run great, why are you
saying this, now I respond to them that I'm in the United States, I'm talking
about the Mercedes that are sold in the United States, not the ones that are sold
in Europe, and when they told me what was sold in Europe it's a completely
different ballgame, because in Europe they use Mercedes for taxis, when I was
in England I saw Mercedes Benz ice cream trucks people were driving around in,
it's a different ballgame in the United States Mercedes were originally
interested in the luxury car market, so they sold high-end luxury cars, that's
where they wanted to make money in the United States, things are starting to change
for Mercedes, especially in the United States, they're pushing their trucks now,
for a while they were selling these Sprinter vans that are pretty good vans, but
strangely enough those mercedes vans, up until a year and a half ago, they
were made in Germany fully tested, then they took the engines and transmissions
out in Germany and brought them to a truck factory that they had bought in
South Carolina, and put them back together again and sold them in America,
now you might well ask, why on earth were they building them entirely in Germany
and then taking the engines transmission apart shipping them to South Carolina
and putting them back together, well it was to avoid this 25% tax that they had on
commercial vehicles, it's the only reason that they did that,
otherwise is patently absurd, but in September 2018
Mercedes opened up a new 500 million dollar plant in South Carolina, where
they're building the Sprinter vans as far as I can tell and they try to hide
everything, the engine and transmission stuff is still coming from Germany, but
they assemble the whole things in South Carolina, you probably see them in
your neighborhood now because Amazon order 20,000 of these Sprinter cargo
vans for bringing packages to people all over the country, so Mercedes which
always sold trucks all around the world is now pushing vans and trucks in the
United States too, they kind of changed their focus, they used to just want
luxury so they didn't sell all the taxi cars and everything they sold in Europe
in the United States, they only throws the expensive ones, now their getting in the
truck market seriously, but when it comes to Mercedes cars sold in the United
States, their still pushing luxury and as far as I'm concerned, the luxury cars
that they built in Germany are better than the ones they build in the United
States, take this Lexus as a comparison lexus aside from one SUV are all
made in Japan, the SUV is made in Cambridge Ontario and the Canadians do a
pretty good job, but all the rest of the Lexuses are still made in Japan, and I
found the same thing, Toyotas and lexuses that are made in Japan, are of a
higher quality than the ones made in other places, just the way that it goes,
today Mercedes sells mostly commercial
vehicles in the United States, of the 2.3 million cars Mercedes sold worldwide in
2017, only 350,000 were sold in the United States, they're pushing more
towards commercial vehicles in the United States now, and of the car sold in
the United States a lot of them are the c-class, the lower-priced well at last the
lower price for Mercedes ones, that are being built in Alabama, not in Germany,
and one Mercedes started manufacturing SUVs in the United States in the late
1990s, the quality went rapidly downhill you find any expert they'll tell you the
same thing, the quality will just, and the customers of mine that owned those, oh man,
one guy had the seat go on fire, he had one of those electric
seats that burned his leather coat and part of his
butt, they had super expensive power-steering leaks, you might think oh
it's just a power steering leak, well on those racks if you got to change
one out, it could cost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on a
Mercedes, because of their crazy German design where you gotta take just about
everything apart to change it, and it's not like their giving these things away
they're still relatively expensive, and the latest research that I've done on
what other people think was that they just rated Mercedes in the middle for a
reliability, no longer the high stuff that they made when I was young and
they're charging a ton of money that isn't the greatest like it used to be, my
advice is, if you want to buy a Mercedes Benz, buy one that was made 100% in
Germany, not one that has, well the engine came from Germany or the transmission
came from Germany or Hungary and they got factories all over the place, you want to
buy one that was fully built in Germany, I just see that they have higher quality
they have less breakdown, and yes your going to pay more for them, there's no arguing
that, but if you're gonna pay that kind of money, at least you're getting the
real thing, I mean when I go out to eat and I want to go to an authentic Chinese
restaurant, I want to have authentic Chinese people making the food in the
back, when I go to a real pizza joint, I want to have that pizza either made by an
Italian, or an Italian American from New York City like I do here in Houston, and
if I was gonna buy a Mercedes, but hey I'm Way too cheap for that I wouldn't
spend that kind of money on a car, I would want one that's built in
Deutschland by Germans, and since this is the
Thursday segment where I answer a viewers question place your own question
on the YouTube comments below and I'll pick the best ones to make a
single video to answer your questions, so where else can you find a guy with 50
years experience of fixing cars to answer your own question with a video
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!
