Kieran28

Sorry if you're getting sick of my value/price based questions... but thank you to all who have offered their advice/thoughts/opinions in my quest for a great deal.

It's pretty rare to find a w210 that can still be CPO'd (would have to be a 2003 wagon since MBUSA won't CPO any car older than 7 years.)

So, is a CPO warranty (12 months) worth it to choose a cpo dealer car over a similar private party car? If so, how much more would you pay?

I know, I know, all dealers rip you off... Just humor me.

Thanks!

ohlord

an 03 wagon with under the miles and first date of use, gone through like they are supposed to it would be at such a high price you would run.
Besides I saw a cpo car with almost no brake pads and what good is a year if the car is in the body shop because it could not stop? Or you are in the Body shop

saintz

How much in repairs will you likely do in 12 months? Bear in mind it's already inspected and checked out ok if it's a CPO. The warranty itself is worth little (the cost of 12 months of maintenance on a good condition car, which is minimal).

The CPO inspection, though, is worth something compared to a car that hasn't been inspected. They won't CPO a car unless it is generally in good shape. They don't want to pay warranty costs.

Kieran28

That's a great question and one I wonder the answer to all the time... this will be my first MBZ, and in addition to budgeting the purchase price, I'm trying to estimate annual repair costs. I'm a mechanical engineer & fairly handy, but don't have the space or tools to do a lot of DIY work my self right now (eventually we'll move to a house with a large garage &/or driveway but for now we're in a condo with a cramped garage & no driveway). So, I've been *guessing* at a budget of $1000 to $2000 per year for repairs & maint. on a 6 to 9 year old w210 wagon.

If a CPO basically guaranteed that we would go a year without having to spend any money on maintanence, then we could spend an extra ~$2000 maybe on the car.I assume by "CPO Inspection" you mean inspection followed by service? I mean, an inspection alone isn't worth much if they don't then fix any problems.Agreed. The way I figured it, the CPO guarantees that EITHER the car is in such good shape that it won't need any work for the first year, or if it does it's covered by the warranty anway. Either way the first year is guaranteed to have zero maintenance costs (or close to zero).

Basically I guess this was my way of asking how much should I budget per year for maintenance on these cars? Eventually I hope to have the space, time & tools to DIY a lot my self, but for the next 3 years or so, I'll likely have to take the car to an indy shop for most things.

Thanks...

Kieran28

No doubt they'd be too expensive. Mostly this is just a rhetorical inquiry.

As I understand it, MBUSA will allow a CPO if the car has less than 100,000 miles and is less than 7 years old. The CPO warranty is only good to 12 months or 100,000 total miles (whichever comes first), so to be worthwhile, the car would have to have probably less than 85,000 miles or so. It's rare to find 2003's in the first place, but when you do see them, they often have less than 85,000, so not surprising that they'd get cpo'd if they're in good shape.
LOL. Good point, & also very good reason to have a car inspected, no matter who is selling it.

saintz

On my CLK, over about 12 months, I had to replace the rear cats (a few hundred bucks). That was about it. Everything else was basic maintenance like oil change, trans oil change, and other stuff not covered by a warranty.

On my E55 over 9 months I've blown the engine mounts. That's probably the only real problem that a warranty would help with. There was a seat rattle, but I finally got that fixed. On a new car, they might have fixed it under warranty, but on a CPO warranty I don't know if they would have helped.

Kieran28

Good info... thanks.

RAMON55

cpo is DEFINITLY worth it.

Kieran28

No question CPO has value. The question is how much? If I can, say, get a very nice 2002 for $10,000 or a 2003 cpo for $17,000, I think I'll pass on the cpo.

If the difference were more like $1000 or $2000, then I might consider paying up for cpo, but even then not sure... a better color on the non-cpo would probably push me away again.

How much do you think a CPO is worth over a comparable non-cpo car?

Hirnbeiss

Since the 5 year used-car warranty on my Ford Windstar cost $760 back in '98, I'll modify the actuarial parameters (in my head, using a proprietary technique) for car-make, warranty-length and inflation, and I arrive at precisely $1000. Is that good or what?

saintz

Here's one way to look at it: a warranty is a type of insurance. Private insurance companies (such as the CPO department of Mercedes) are in the business of making money, meaning they seek to pay less in repairs/claims than they charge in premium (or in this case, markup on the car). Generally, this means that buying a warranty is a losing proposition.

It is not likely that you are going to be able to do the math better than the warranty company, baring unusual circumstances (like if you plan to secretly run nitrous and then remove it when the motor blows and try to get it fixed under warranty). The actuarial department at MB knows the exact answer (at least on average) to the question you are asking ("what will the repair cost be over X months?"). The rest of us can only guess.

There are a few times when a warranty makes sense. If you really beat on a car (like use it as a taxi), but not such that you give an excuse for them to void the warranty (like racing modifications), it's possible you will incur statistically above average repair bills that will make the warranty worthwhile. The actuarial department isn't concerned with making a profit on each and every warranty, just on the aggregate, so there are outliers who will benefit.

The biggest reason people get warranties, however, is generally due to poor fiscal management on their part. A warranty means you pay up front (or amortized over your monthly payments) for service on the car. This makes it predictable, and allows you to get a bank loan for that service rolled into your car payment. It reduces the need to actually be fiscally conservative, save money to make repairs, and drive a vehicle that you can afford to fix in the event that something expensive breaks. That doesn't make you a bad person, it just means that you pay more for not being fiscally conservative.

If you can afford to either fix or write the asset off (cars, refrigerators, you name it), you will ultimately save money by not buying warranties. Every once in a while you'll get hit with a repair bill higher than the cost a warranty might have been, but in the long run you will pocket the money that the warranty companies would otherwise put on their yearly reports as profit.

That said, this all assumes that there is a stable market price for each car. As you noted, the market for used cars is highly variable, especially these days. You might have a Mercedes dealer desperate to sell while all the private sellers in the area refuse to accept realistic prices. If the CPO costs less than (or very close to) the equivalent private party car, buy it.