rev up your engine today I'm gonna talk about a very expensive SUV
Mercedes G wagon now they've been making these things for a long time since
1979 people used to import them to the United States and Germany because they
didn't sell them here but they have sold them here
and strangely enough from 2013 to 2015 they actually made 69 pickup versions of
the things now they technically call them SUVs now g wagon really means
terrain car hey it's all-wheel drive it's set to go through some serious
terrain now the original list price but a g550 was well over $100,000 the
expensive vehicles is knowed on that but look you get the chrome spare tire cover
there it is you want easy access to the back well doesn't get much easier than
this you can climb right in like everything else the seats fold back if
you want and this baby is tall you got a lot of height in this thing now the
original G wagons were handmade by Magna Steyr in Austria and guess what they
still are now it's kind of big v8 engine we take some of this plastic crap out of
the way fully loaded one is over 6600 pounds this is over a three ton
vehicle with all this power and all this way the combined rating 13 miles a
gallon you're lucky if you get 10 in one of these things in town you do not buy
these things forgets mileage now this one has recently purchased use the
fourth owner of this vehicle they come they go if we look at the odometer got
almost 148 thousand miles on it and it sold for less than 20% of its original
list price which is totally illogical with any Mercedes but especially with
these they don't sell that many I'm between three and four thousand a year
the parts aren't cheap so Mercedes are not cheap and on a lower production
model it tend to be even more expensive now this particular one from what the
new owner tells me came from New York State doesn't surprise me I can see the
corrosion now this is just superficial rust but when we go further down even
the structural bolts they're starting to show
rust on them here we go to the other side hey you see the ABS got quite a bit
of corrosion there down here and the lines coming off the brake master
cylinder you can see they're really getting corroded that's why if you're
buying a used G Wagon or really any other car it's a better idea to do the
opposite of this vehicle you don't want to buy a vehicle that started out in New
York State and ended up in Texas you wouldn't want to buy a vehicle that
started out in Texas and then you were imported it to New York State that's a
smarter move but on the positive side of this whole thing look everything's still
metal you know in 2012 there's a bunch of plastic rim all these parts are made
out of metal the oil cooler everything's made out of metal it's not plastic even
the oil filter that's hiding in here that cap comes off the cap is plastic on
all the new cars not on is it still metal its Austrian to put this thing
together hey they did build a solid vehicle there's no arguing that and when
we go on or Neath this is one solid vehicle you can see it doesn't have
modern CV joints it's got the old-fashioned ones made out of steel
these things are solid and of course when we go to the back side the big
solid rear end these are hefty vehicles they're not little toys they are very
solid built but again since I lived in New York State check this out some of
these components on the frame and stuff hey they're riding away they got some
rust on them they kind of amazes me about the Germans they're like corrosion
stuff yeah it isn't what it should be my mother was a buffalo she's got a Toyota
Corolla six years older than s doesn't have any of that rust on it they
actually did the rust proofing better than the Germans did so if you're
looking at a used German car you really got a check for rust really
they just don't do the corrosion inhibitors in the past at least
companies like Toyota and Honda did that don't have the rusting problem but now
it comes the real test the electronics test got the old scan so hooked up we're
gonna see what's really inside this thing I think it'd be alphabetical but
it's not there Mercedes is first look at thatmy we'll do a little diagnosis here
it's gonna take a while because there's a lot of stuff that these things scan as
you can see it's only nine percent done now well it's getting there it's at
ninety three percent so far it's finding a lot of codes we're gonna count on up
when it's done lots of fall code so we're
I call them all 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 41 42 43 44 45 separate trouble codes now
granted some of them are related to each other but this is typical when I get any
of these German cars when they get to be the age of this thing they're gonna have
problems up the wazoo some of them you'll live with and some
of them you can't live with you look at a few of the more serious ones here such
as the electronic transmission control it's got a code for the voltage on the
terminals low can communication with other control modules as impossible
meaning there's a problem with either the wiring or the computer modules to
the transmission the electronic stabilization which is a big deal has
problems signal is implausible or loss steering ankle sensors is initialized
now these are big tall vehicles they put all that off in them so they don't tip
over well this system obviously is not working right they cost a fortune to
repair these things you have to realize you buy one of these old things a lot of
those systems aren't gonna work correctly anymore it has a problem with
a signal activation module and it's got a lot of kinds of problems with the
wiring for the beams realize on this thing even the headlights are controlled
by computers these things just will drive you nuts if you want a perfect car
you live in texas like me the automatic air conditioning has problems too and that's
a big deal here so you have to realize buying any use Mercedes it's a big
gamble to begin with but one of these g wagons you are looking at an electronic
rat's nest as they age just to take a perfect example I'd show you some
corrosion on the vehicle all that wiring has wiring connectors on it you get a
little bit of corrosion on any of those wires it'll start giving weird feedback
to the computer and you can get a lot of codes like that so if you want a vehicle
that's perfectly operating you would spend the same amount of money paid for
the car in order to fix all those things but if you can live without that stuff
if it runs good enough so people don't mind cuz these big v8 they can keep
rolling even with a lot of stuff isn't working for her i older will like this I
don't know it wants not so much because everything is even more computer control
but this all things don't runs pretty good I mean it's a tremendous gas hog
there's no arguing that but you gotta realize before you buy one have
a guy like me hook up a fancy machine and give you the real skinny on the
vehicle because I've got a previous owner even has no idea all the things
that are going on with it they can't hide it from the machine so
realize if you're gonna buy a G Wagon especially a used one you can't have it
to impress people about how rich you are because you probably be spending a bunch
of your money fixing it if you keep it for years and put some serious mileage
on them these are not cheap to repair or maintain vehicles but I do have to say I
saw one that was three years old in Houston the other day got it all fixed
up he's trying to sell it used for over two hundred thousand dollars so I guess
if you buy one for 30 you got a lot of wiggle room to put money into repairs
and here's some bonus questions and answers Martin Lewis says hey Scotty
Greene's from Australia we didn't have a Subaru Impreza WRX 1997 150,000
miles that's a standard transmission that's what you want the autos are
garbage but it's got a lot of miles on it it could still be a decent vehicle
it's old it's a 97 but if it still works pretty good
hey don't pay much but it could be a good vehicle I know for my friend
Australia a lot of people like those things in Australia especially with the
standard transmission so don't pay too much but it could be a fun car but you
do want to check out the engine have the head guest to check put in a block leak
test to see if it's leaking because if the head gasket is leaking don't buy it because you'd have to
rebuild the engine John Brown says what do you think about a Cadillac Escalade
coming out 2021 I'm not been a fan of those things since they came out because
guess what Scotty has to work on those things I live in Houston Texas big city
big oil money and there's a lot of guys driving around Cadillac Escalades a lot
of the rapper guys like driving around them too as they age they become endless
endless endless money pits and they are also tremendous gas hogs don't believe
any of the gas mileage ratings that you read you drive those things in the city
you're gonna get below 10 miles a gallon that's just how those things are they're
big they're heavy I personally wouldn't buy one you want a big heavy thing like
that get a Toyota Sequoia or something a Ford Expedition or something
but I wouldn't buy a Cadillac Koval says 2013 Hyundai Elantra is even worth
looking at why not do you wanna pay much for one if you drive it a ride smooth
the engine goes good after your test you look under the car you don't see oil
dripping down water dripping down can't get to a mechanic if a mechanic says
decent vehicles you get a good price hey I've
had customers buy used ones they had low enough miles I wouldn't touch one of
those things than one hundred twenty hundred forty thousand huh you buy one
the general will make it to 100 hundred twenty thousand without any real
problems look at it the mechanic says okay you can get it cheap enough go
ahead, rabble rouser says
should not by 2020 Civic Si or type r well it depends on how much money you have
to spend you know fast little cars get the Civic type-r you're gonna pay a
whole bunch more money for it but man those things are screamers plus they're
gonna hold their resale value because they're basically tiny race cars so if
you can afford it it's gonna keep its value up just make sure you keep
insurance on it cuz it gets wrecked you lose an awful lot of money get full
coverage on overtime well probably become collectors items of
some sort where the Civic Si won't but on the other hand Civic that's like cost
a lot less yeah that gave you the speed and handling but it's a great little
knock around car for standard transportation, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell