rev up your engines, today's question comes from Benny Smith who says Scotty are
the Mercedes that they make and sell in Germany and Europe better than the ones
that they sell in the United States, yes I believe they are, and to understand why
look at a little history, when I was a young mechanic in the 60s, Mercedes
Benzs were built like tanks, really solid reliable vehicles, but they were
all made in Germany, but today at least as of 2017, fifty five point six percent
of the Mercedes made are made outside of Germany, I've often made videos saying
hey don't buy one of these luxury Mercedes in the United States, they're
endless money pits, they have horrible resale value, and people from Europe
say, well Scotty we've had these Mercedes in our family for decades and
they still run great, why are you saying this, now I respond to them that
I'm in the United States, I'm talking about the Mercedes that are sold in the
United States, not the ones that are sold in Europe, and when they told me what was
sold in Europe it's a completely different ballgame, because in Europe
they use Mercedes for taxis, when I was in England I saw Mercedes Benz ice cream
trucks people were driving around in, it's a different ballgame in the United
States Mercedes were originally interested in the luxury car market, so
they sold high-end luxury cars, that's where they wanted to make money in the
United States, things are starting to change for Mercedes, especially in the United
States, they're pushing their trucks now, for a while they were selling these
Sprinter vans that are pretty good vans, but strangely enough those mercedes
vans, up until a year and a half ago, they were made in Germany fully tested, then
they took the engines and transmissions out in Germany and brought them to a
truck factory that they had bought in South Carolina, and put them back
together again and sold them in America, now you might well ask, why on earth
were they building them entirely in Germany and then taking the engines transmission
apart shipping them to South Carolina and putting them back together, well it was
to avoid this 25% tax that they had on commercial vehicles, it's the only reason
that they did that, otherwise is patently absurd, but in
September 2018 Mercedes opened up a new 500 million
dollar plant in South Carolina, where they're building the Sprinter vans as
far as I can tell and they try to hide everything, the engine and transmission
stuff is still coming from Germany, but they assemble the whole things in South
Carolina, you probably see them in your neighborhood now because Amazon
order 20,000 of these Sprinter cargo vans for bringing packages to people all
over the country, so Mercedes which always sold trucks all around the world
is now pushing vans and trucks in the United States too, they kind of changed
their focus, they used to just want luxury so they didn't sell all the taxi
cars and everything they sold in Europe in the United States, they only throws
the expensive ones, now their getting in the truck market seriously, but when it comes
to Mercedes cars sold in the United States, their still pushing luxury and as
far as I'm concerned, the luxury cars that they built in Germany are better
than the ones they build in the United States, take this Lexus as a comparison
lexus aside from one SUV are all made in Japan, the SUV is made in
Cambridge Ontario and the Canadians do a pretty good job, but all the rest of the
Lexuses are still made in Japan, and I found the same thing, Toyotas and
lexuses that are made in Japan, are of a higher quality than the ones made in
other places, just the way that it goes, today
Mercedes sells mostly commercial vehicles in the United States, of the 2.3
million cars Mercedes sold worldwide in 2017, only 350,000 were sold in the
United States, they're pushing more towards commercial vehicles in the
United States now, and of the car sold in the United States a lot of them are the
c-class, the lower-priced well at last the lower price for Mercedes ones, that are
being built in Alabama, not in Germany, and one Mercedes started manufacturing
SUVs in the United States in the late 1990s, the quality went rapidly downhill
you find any expert they'll tell you the same thing, the quality will just, and the
customers of mine that owned those, oh man, one guy had the
seat go on fire, he had one of those electric seats
that burned his leather coat and part of his butt, they had super expensive
power-steering leaks, you might think oh it's just a power steering leak, well on those
racks if you got to change one out, it could cost thousands and
thousands and thousands of dollars on a Mercedes, because of their crazy German
design where you gotta take just about everything apart to change it, and it's
not like their giving these things away they're still relatively expensive, and
the latest research that I've done on what other people think was that they
just rated Mercedes in the middle for a reliability, no longer the high stuff
that they made when I was young and they're charging a ton of money that
isn't the greatest like it used to be, my advice is, if you want to buy a Mercedes
Benz, buy one that was made 100% in Germany, not one that has, well the engine
came from Germany or the transmission came from Germany or Hungary and they got
factories all over the place, you want to buy one that was fully built in Germany,
I just see that they have higher quality they have less breakdown, and yes your going
to pay more for them, there's no arguing that, but if you're gonna pay that kind
of money, at least you're getting the real thing, I mean when I go out to eat
and I want to go to an authentic Chinese restaurant, I want to have authentic
Chinese people making the food in the back, when I go to a real pizza joint, I
want to have that pizza either made by an Italian, or an Italian American from New
York City like I do here in Houston, and if I was gonna buy a Mercedes, but hey
I'm Way too cheap for that I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a car, I
would want one that's built in Deutschland
by Germans, and since this is the Thursday segment where I answer a
viewers question place your own question on the YouTube comments below
and I'll pick the best ones to make a single video to answer your questions, so
where else can you find a guy with 50 years experience of fixing cars to
answer your own question with a video so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!