This is a good discussion here. I don't think my current Benz is bad, compared to my old W210. However I also own a Nissan Maxima, you can't say it feels like a Maxima with the trunk, that's where you're wrong. I know when I close the trunk on the Maxima, itdoes not have a solid thunk as the current W211. The newest Benz use alumnium on their cars with the hood and trunk, not sure about the door though. Even my mom's Husband has a older Benz, he noticed that my current one looks lighter and when he looked at the placard see what's the weight of the car, he said looks like they are using aluminum. Going on with quality issue, that's where you have to remember where it started when they merged with Chrysler Coporation, that when they were no "text book" on management to run two entirely different car manufacturer or where to start. Mercedes knew what they were doing but they took too much focus on the Chrylser line up to make them better cars to get the most bang for their bucks since it was a money pit. What's going on with Mercedes got strayed on their quality issues. When Jurgen Shremp was on a power drive trying to everything at once, rather than taking a step at a time to fix the obivous issue at hand at the time. While Dr Z was turning Chrylser around when was President of Chrsyler group. Now he's at the helm for the entire Corporation, he's gonna roll up his sleeve and fix Mercedes, only time will tell how thing will turn out.

 

I think we are splitting hairs here, especially with the class of cars we drive. With modern cars in this class I honestly don’t think it matters if you drive an MB, Volvo, BMW or any other luxury car. If you were to get in an accident that falls with the 95-98 percentile I believe that you will be able to walk away from it and live to drive another day. Many of the safety ratings in this class are selling points and acronyms that look very well in marketing material and brochures. It reminds my of when I had my stereo Hi-Fi age where I would sit down and compare specs on amplifiers and see that this one had a better cross-over amplification than the other one or a better signal/noise ratio. If you were to do a blind A/B test you could not hear the difference.

In modern cars you should always expect that everything outside the main cabin is less sturdy than the cabin. It is by design since it is meant to crumble and crush when in a collision. It is the crush zone and a way to divert the impact energy away from the passenger cabin to ensure that the passengers can walk away. The older cars (’60 and ’70) are some of the most unsafe cars to ride since that are built strong and will not crush. I remember that my grandfather had a Volvo Amazon (in Europe, not sure if it was ever in the US) and that thing weighed in at 2 tons (~4000 lbs) and he was so proud of that thing until he got in an accident and got seriously hurt.

-S