marmik

In your opinion, is it the design quality, build quality (workmanship) or 3rd party parts quality (window switches, etc) that is the main culprit to the problems with the MLs?

Thanks, Mike

mbtech208

I think it's mainly an issue of cost-cutting. When the ML first came out in 1998, it cost what? $35,000? The exterior came with black, unpainted bumpers. The interior had plastic everywhere, hardly any wood. Then people were complaining that it wasn't up to Mercedes levels, so they put some more wood and leather in it, painted the bumpers, added a V8, put a navigation system in it, more airbags, xenon headlights. But deep-down inside, the ML is still the cost-cutting SUV it was designed as. Before the ML, people wanted a Mercedes and they wanted an SUV, but they weren't going to spend $50,000-up on one. Now look at it, what does the ML55 cost? Somewhere north of $60 grand? They should have started there to begin with. And told people "I'm sorry it's pricey, but it's worth it. For us to make a $35,000 SUV, it wouldn't be the Mercedes you're expecting"

sosh

Don't quite agree with MB Tech. The inexpensive SUV's such as the explorer and some of the Japanese companies offer many of the same features as the newer ML's and from what I can see their stuff works pretty good. With MB's other vehicles similar features that are offered in the ML are included and they for the most part work just fine with greater reliability. The early ML's had numerous problems which were corrected fairly quickly. My 01 E320 has had NO problems. I believe that MBUSA is disorganized, suffers from poor management, and from poor communications internally and with their dealers. They also do not seem to have a quality control system in place that controls their vendor supplies products, at least one that is effective. My suggestion is that they bring in German management and use the same vendors that are used in the European built vehicles. In the long run that would be more cost concious than the repeated replacement of components, Buy back of vehicles and poor customer relations.