Sal Collaziano

In the next year or so, I may be in the market for a newer vehicle. I'm considering a 2007 S550 - but I'm not hearing good things about the warranty. It appears as if you cannot get a warranty worth a few years as a second owner. What's the best I could expect? One year or 100,000 miles?

Thanks in advance...

emagni

I just bought a Certified Pre-Owned 2007 S550 with 22,450 miles. I get the remaining factory warranty (48 months or 50,000 miles) which expires on 9/28/2010 (car was bought by the first owner on 9/28/2006) and since it was a CPO, I get one more year of warranty up to 9/28/2011 and up to 100,000 miles.

The best you can expect is really based on how much you drive and within what timeframe. For me, this is my primary car so any major issues should show up within this timeframe (cross my fingers X X) with the remaining warrant mileages of close to 78k miles.

One thing I always do is pull up the current list of Technical Service Bulletin (TSBs) and tune myself to be more aware if I have those same issues. If there is enough evidence that I do, I bring it in as soon as possible and get it confirmed and corrected by the service department at the dealership. Since the manuafacturer pays the service department to correct an issue that has been published through their TSB, this is an easy revenue stream for the dealership and they also try to fix the problem. I always bring a print out of the TSB so that we can get to the issue quickly without going to a slew of problems descriptions to get them sync up.

Sal Collaziano

Thank you. So if I were to buy the car you bought next year, I'd have about two years left on the factory warranty.. Maybe at the end of this year, I'll look into buying a 2008 CPO to stay covered until late 2012....

emagni

I think if you won't close on a deal until the end of this year or early next year, I would definitely look into a 2008 model not only from a retention value standpoint but also from a warranty perspective as you mentioned. CPO really is the only way to go with these cars since there are so many automation that went into the S550 that could break down and result in costly fixes. Best wishes to your purchase and hopefully you can get the dealership to throw in the CPO for free :-)