bfeng

After 9 years and 128k trouble free miles, we said adios to our M1999 L320. It went to a nice young man (for his fiancee). I have to say that this vehicle was amazing with regard to reliability and utility. It towed like an F150, drove rock solid (better than our new W164), and was dead nuts reliable. The only things that broke were the window switch module, a driveshaft bearing and the catalytic converters. All after the 8th year and 110kmiles. It was better than our Toyota Camry or our Lexus ES300. My BMW? No contest. The BMW (bought it at the same time we got the W163 has been a total disaster in terms of reliability and durability.

This forum (and the early Edmunds forum promoted by Drew) were great sources of information and advice. Invaluable seems like an appropriate description.

The sad part is ... in many ways our new W164 is no match for the ol' W163. Utility and ruggedness have given way to a more fashionable but seemingly more fragile design. I'm sure the W164 is a winning formula for Daimler, but I don't know if we'll stay with Mercedes when the W164 gets replaced ... Maybe a Land Rover?

John

Gustaf

You'll be back

mihir_d

Agree with you 100% - 164 is no match for 163 with regards to ruggedness & towing capability...

My plan is to keep the ML till 200K miles (2015)...and then thoughts are to move on to a GL...but the GL too is unibody..so I might have to ditch MB too..

For now, I am towing my boat, commuting over mountains, hauling stuff from home depot and driving in style at Saturday night parties all with the versatile 163...

mihir_d

If interested, here's a rather dated but very interesting article on the Unibody Vs Body-on-Frame debate with W163's chief design engineer's decision to go BOF at the center of the whole discussion..

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...78/ai_20160852