Petrocelli

I have leased a Mercedes since 1997. I get a 45,000 miles, 3 year lease, and bring it back around 44,000 miles. The dealer writes off the remaining payments, and I drive off in a new Mercedes about every three years.

I have always been interested in buying a car off lease. I have heard anecdotal stories that a Mercedes can get expensive to maintain after 75,000 miles. Question: Does anyone know of any reports or studies that have hard evidence of the cost of maintenance on Mercedes when they get to higher mileage? If so, can you provide a link?

Thank in advance.

Petrocelli

chassis

Which model are you considering? This makes a difference.

From input on this site, it can be seen that air suspension (ABC) and Diesel engines are costly systems.

Brakes will show up as higher mileage repair costs, that you are in fact paying as you go today, in your lease residual value. You happen to be not shelling out a la carte for rotors and pads, but you will pay these costs if you purchase and operate the vehicle to high mileage.

There are complaints on this site about $1200 for dealer replacement of 4 rotors and pads. Ladies and gentlemen, $1200 is the same cost that other dealers charge for the past 10 years for other makes, to wit, Volkswagen. I paid this gladly to my VW dealer and enjoyed new OEM pads and rotors with a firm brake pedal.

Doing brakes yourself/DIY is a great option if you want and are able. If you don’t want/aren’t able, pay the money and count it as the cost of operation, which it is.

Petrocelli

I was just asking a general question, but what if the car was the most recent version of the C300 Coupe?

chassis

Still need to be more specific. The "latest version" of the C-Class is the W205. Have you read this forum about the C-Class sedan and C-Class coupe?

The main thing to be aware of is the wrist pin issue. Certain production dates are affected. Year, model and variant need to be known to answer your question.

In general, any vehicle has the same operating expenses:

- fuel
- insurance, registration and other locally required fees, permits and inspections
- oil + filters (air and oil)
- tires
- brakes

Shocks/struts are vehicles and driving style dependent. I have driven vehicles over 200k miles with the original factory shocks. And I have driven vehicles where new shocks were needed after 50k miles.

If you are asking about model-specific bugaboos, you might get more detail by posting in the forum for the model you are interested to learn about.

LogicalApex

It probably depends a lot on how you plan to maintain the car. Assuming, you're not referring to repairing failures, but general car maintenance.

For my 2014 C300 dealers are now pushing for $800+ for services in the Philly area and I looked at the average numbers for the last year and I'm at ~$100/m for dealer maintenance. A trusted third party would likely be able to cut those costs quote a lot, but I kept it dealer serviced due to still being under CPO Extended.

For me, I'm swapping to BMW as their maintenance will run me about $500/y If I pay for pre-paid maintenance for 7y/125K miles. That wasn't the motivator for me to swap from MB, but it helped to sweeten the deal.

You can get a guesstimate by taking a look at the service manual and seeing what big ticket items are coming up and also bounce around with prepaid maintenance from MB and see where that lands you. As you can do 7y/100K miles with them as well that may allow you to keep costs in check. Services used to be in the $500 range when I got my car and then dealers would start to try pushing for stuff like Brake Service or Spark Plugs as a separate line item...