Thanks Sportstick, it is a small world... I think had Ford been able to call the car Sierra here (think GMC owned it in the USA) it might have been a hit. Unrelated to this thread, and without searching if there are posts about it already, what do you make of the gear "suggestions" in the dash? It apparently does not take into consideration if you are going up hill for example and of course it doesn't know what traffic is like ahead of you :-) I believe it's suggestions are based on fuel economy. Do you find yourself upshifting more than you would on your own? Do you skip gears if you are in 3rd and it suggests 6th? Just curious. Since the car is so quiet, as opposed to my Civic Si, it's harder to tell if am straining the engine if I'm a tad too slow to be in a higher gear. Does your car also sound kind of "wheezy" in first gear? 2nd gear is a lot "smoother"

Thanks RLE, I feel better and better about my decision. But unless a car is constantly in the shop I am not really concerned with reliability (well I don't want the car to break down anywhere of course) since I only lease and usually the first 3 years are fine no matter how crappy the car's engineering is...

 

The Merkur nomenclature story is entertaining. The LM Division and the agency were considering different names for the brand. Taunus was a Ford name in Europe, but considered too close to Taurus. Sierra sounded too much like the Olds Ciera. Bob Lutz settled the matter when he decided it would be Merkur, which is German for Mercury. Then the pronunciation drills began!! Many midwesterners had enough trouble with Mercury, pronouncing MURRK-uh-ree instead of the proper MER-kewr-ree. We finally came up with telling everyone to think of a horse (mare) and a beer (coors, but without the "s").....MARE-coor. Then, we never did a great job of explaining that Merkur was the brand, and XR4Ti was the model, like Mercedes and C300. So, many folks called it a Mercury Merkur ("Department of Redundancy Department!"), when it was a Merkur XR4Ti, later followed by a Merkur Scorpio. Secretaries of State had lots of fun registering the first few of these! It was a short-lived and disadvantaged program, but that space ship design with the dual wing spoiler certainly attracted lots of attention when I had chances to drive the very first imported prototype on the streets. That particular car had a V6 in it which was a lot sweeter than the eventual turbo 4 used in production.

As for C Class manual shifting, I do not have an upshift light. So, I make it up as I go. The broad relatively flat torque curve is very handy and forgiving. Yes, I do skip gears as best suits the situation. Once on the highway, I can go from 4th to 6th. 6th to 3rd downshifts are fun and work well too... a chance to show the benefits of double-clutching to the young ones Nothing wheezy in first....my main complaint has been a shudder at launch, overcome by higher revs than any other stick I've ever driven. You will feel lugging if you drop the revs too far....try it once just to confirm the sound, but don't make it a habit! Take a high gear at very low speed, and just gently lean into the throttle....you'll feel a slight vibration with the lack of response....DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!!

 

I understand your frustration, but you are taking aim at the wrong target. If the issue is trouble 5 years out, it's not the plant. The vehicle was properly assembled when new, but the design/material spec/engineering/supplier standards, ALL CREATED BY MB IN GERMANY, did not meet the requirements. Wherever the plant is located, they can only assemble the car the company designed. This link will show that MB is assembling SUVs in the US better than most competitors:

http://www.jdpower.com/autos/ratings...ssover-and-suv

How well it holds up over the years depends on how well the guys in Stuttgart did their work.

 

Thanks for your post, very interesting story behind the Merkur name, not only was it silly and redundant under the Mercury brand but also difficult to figure out the correct pronunciation...

Regarding the m/t, my 2010 m/t C300 doesn't have a upshift light but in the center of the speedometer the LCD will show an arrow with the recommended gear to upshift (only, it does not recommend a downshift gear when the car slows down...). Yours does not have that? Of course I don't really need it to know when an upshift is needed but it's curious that it recommends upshifts at much lower RPM's than I would chose. I believe it's recommendations are based on economy and min RPM's so as not to bog the engine down.

 

No upshift arrow indicator here either. This could be due to the difference in model year, as yours is newer. It's possible that MB needed some CAFE credits for 2010MY, and the presence of the upshift indication does provide them a small addition to their overall average. Upshift indicators are usually calibrated to encourage as early upshifting as possible without lugging, as you suggested. As for downshifting, overall fuel economy is never optimized by raising the revs, so they don't encourage lower gears.