Edmunds TCO estimates $3-5K per year in maintenance and repairs (on top of $15K annual insurance, gas, depreciation, etc) on a 2012 CL550. This seems like a lot of cash to flush down the toilet every year given the alternative uses for it.

What are your actual experiences on wear items like tires, brakes, bulbs, rubber parts, etc.?

 

If you drive 30-40K a year, and have the dealer service the car, I can see how you'd spend 3-5K for maint a year.

Gas? About 22-23 mpg doing a constant 75-80 mph for hours. Got 27mpg last week driving back from South Dakota with a Great tailwind and on US 83 which on the whole is just 65 mph, but you do a bit more than that if your normal. Then back to 80 mph from Childress to Ft Worth on US287 which drops the mpg back a bit.

Getting new motor mounts today/tomorrow. I had a vibration in the steering wheel for the last year and a half at idle and low speeds. Service manager says they're covered under the warranty. Never felt the vibration at hwy speed though. I had thought the vibration was a characteristic of the 4.6 engine since I'd had a CLS as a loaner before buying this CL, and it had the same steering wheel vibration. Thought it was 'normal'. Duh.

Same tires for the last 45K miles and still good to go. I love to 'hate' on 20" wheels and tires. They make NOISE and noise wears one down on long trips.

Hate MY nav screen. Totally unusable during bright sunny days. Can't read a darn thing on it on those days. At night.....just fine. On cloudy days....useable. Never had this problem on the SL I had nor my ML. Both of those are/were just fine. Even bought new glasses to see if that helped...no, did not. It's the car, not the operator.

I have the night vision feature and it seems to impress............except I drive hours and hours at night and the glare bothers me so I don't use it at all. Waste of money imho. I even turn off the navigation at night because of the glare on any car.

Suspension .......I wish it were stiffer. Hardly ever put it in COMFORT.

The acoustic laminated glass is well worth it. A thug tried to break into the car last year out in CA and all he accomplished was making spider webs in the two right hand windows. It cost the insurance company big bucks to replace both pieces. I mean some thing on the order of 1300 bucks a piece for the glass alone.

Before I bought this USED 2011 CL550, the dealership replaced the windshield because of a very tiny spot near the windshield wipers, that looked a lot like a very small piece of gravel hit it. Almost unnoticable to at least me. They told me it was going to cost them 4500 bucks to replace that piece of acoustic laminated glass. Glad it was them paying instead of me.

On the whole very pleased with the car. It's a Great interstate cruiser. Comfortable and Quiet plus it has a zero to sixty of 4.2 and a quater mile of 12.8. What's not to like?

Time to go do something useful and get off here.

 

Tire cost/life depends on the type of tires on your vehicle. I have a 2007 with staggered 19 inch wheels. The rear tires last about 15,000 miles and the front last about 30,000 miles. OEM replacement tires are about $500 each installed. You will get good gas mileage ONLY when you are able to maintain constant highway speed. I have observed 30 MPG over a 100 mile trip with the 5.5L engine which is less efficient than the 4.6 in the newer models. The mileage drops significantly for stop and go traffic.

Maintenance costs at the dealer varies significantly depending on where you live. As an example, the dealer cost in Southern California is easily half that of other parts of the country since there is usually a dealer that advertises a low cost and several others will price match.