Time to ditch this car?

Any  clues to whether the other owners had troubles as well?

5 owners in 7 years seems excessive.

Maybe it's a Friday car, I know it wasn't made in UK but I'm sure this applies to other manufacturers .

Of course if you are going to move it on then having some warranty is a good thing.

You have solved all the problems though.

No indication as to the fortunes of earlier owners. Of course, I can't be sure that I have fixed all the problems 

Fraser

In my view even to pose that question is sufficient grounds to sell. You already know that you have a lemon, so good riddance.

If it was me I'd get rid of it. Once you lose confidence in a car you worry every time you drive it. And that's an awful lot of owners!

I have had three cars that I had total confidence in and two that I did not.

The good ones were a 1973 Renault 12. Basic, and very comfortable, but not fast - 70 mph flat out and still 40 mpg. I did not put a foot wrong until rust caused it to fail its MOT in 1987. Not bad considering. Ran for three years.

Later on I had an EX-GPO Meastro van, which ran like sewing machine, was good on fuel, and never gave trouble in three years, when someone offered me good money for it so I sold. Also ran for three years.

The best of all was my  1989 Volvo 240, which I ran for eleven years [when it was nearly twenty two years old and still completely rust-free and trustworthy], before selling it to a friend for £150. One battery, half an exhaust system, and four tyres was the extent of the regular maintenance, and the only spanner in the works was £20 relay for the fuel lift pump. Amazing car. I did nearly 60,000 miles of it total of 120,00 when I sold it. 

The complete rubbish ones were a Golf  Mark Two Diesel which cost me a fortune in failing shock-absorbers, major brake parts, and it was a tyre eater because of the heavy engine in an otherwise rather light chassis. It was worse on fuel - in spite of being Diesel - than the Maestro, or the Volvo, and the engine lost compression at 110,000 miles. Terrible vehicle with not one single redeeming feature. Ran for for four years. Aaaah!

And the other poor one was a Renault 21, which was erratic about starting, and burned oil lket a central heating boiler. This at 60.000 miles. I was given £200 in P/X for the Volvo.

My mistake with the VW was to persist. I should have ditched at the early signs of trouble. I got out the Renault 21 as soon as I realised that it could become a money pit after only six months.

I don't have a car now, but ran a Nissan Micra for eleven month till May. That was also an excellent car for reliability, though I did just about 1,000 miles only so only proved that the starting was good really!

ATB from George

It's saying to you, 'Fraser, you are a man of discretion and discernment, why are you driving round in a car that prats buy. Buy something with understated style instead, not a penis on wheels'. Get shot and buy something small and fun instead. Who needs five litres, it's not a lorry.

Yeah. Go and buy a 2CV! 

I'm with Tony on this. Once you've lost confidence in a car it's time to get rid. 

I've just decided to sell my wife's BMW 520 after 13 years of good driving, but on her last trip to Redcar she had problems. Now buying her a Nissan Qashqai with a 1.2 litre engine. I managed 3 grand off the list price using a great web site called Car Wow.

Good luck.

Steve

A car with 5 owners over 7 years has to be a risk.

A car that develops two significant faults in as many weeks has to be a risk

I would move it on and replace it with a one-owner car where the one owner has replaced it with a new car of the same sort.

Both my brothers buy a couple of brand new Mercs every three years. They, and their wives just don't like having anything older. Means that every three years, four lucky people get a nicely run-in Merc at a sensible price.

Err, a Mercedes SL has lineage, breeding and understated beauty from the first Gullwing, through the 'Pagoda', to the more modern R107 and R129 to the R230 model that Fraser has. He is indeed a man of discretion and discernment!  

Fraser

43k miles is not a lot for a seven year old car, let alone a Mercedes, suggesting that it has not had a hard life. You are right about the production run and as you probably know Mercedes had their quality issues some years back but had pretty much sorted those by the year of your SL. The 5-litre V8 is reckoned to be pretty bullet proof if the service schedule is followed.  Has you SL got a full service history?

You don't say where you sourced it or where you had the recent service, but I'd be inclined to track down a reputable specialist who services Mercedes (not the main dealers - ok for new cars but very expensive for older ones), explain your worries to them and ask them to give it a thorough and honest appraisal.  Your profile says you're based in Suffolk.  Specialist firms in your part of the country that have been recommended by members of the Mercedes Owners Club include Alex Crow at Stowmarket, Derrick Wells, Ipswich.  Also if you have doubts about the SL's service history, any of the Mercedes service centres should be able to look up and tell you what's been done since registration if you provide them with the WDB number which is usually displayed in the windscreen. Missing history should be a worry. 

Apologies if you already know and have done this stuff.  

MDS

Do you like it, can you trust it and can you get a decent warranty to cover it? If there is a doubt there is no doubt, providing it doesn’t cost you a fortune to change cars. I run a car which is worth comparatively little, less than 10% of its original sticker price, but I love it and a big ticket bill will still cost me considerably less than buying something else. Depreciation of a newer car and cost to change are often underplayed in the rush to get a new toy.  But a dog’s a dog and the sooner it’s living in someone else’s kennel the better. 

Something like an SL500- can have many owners.  You might get one that’s been pampered by one owner and maybe underused a bit too much for its own good. It’s just as common for such cars to be run for a year or a summer and sold on.  And it’s barely run it.  I tend to buy posh cars and run them sympathetically until the wheels fall off. I'll never buy anything without impeccable paperwork and that's not in excellent condition. We got 24 years out of a Mercedes 230TE and 17 years out of a BMW 528. They were by any car trader’s standard “uneconomic to repair” for years before we moved them on but you’ve got to look at the true cost to change, not just the cost of the repair as a fraction of the car’s value.

And if after all’s said and done you just don't want the car, or fancy a change more than you fancy keeping it, then do it. Life’s too short.

I would question why a car with only 43K miles has had 5 owners in 7 years...something seems not quite right about that.

The phrase 'throwing good money after bad' comes in maybe?

It it has levelled off in depreciation terms at the moment and it is currently probably saleable but if you keep it few years it will become a real old nail; worth little and potentially full of money you have pumped into it. It will also be costing you lots to run and insure too I suspect!

One other option, try to purchase an extended warranty from someone like warranty direct. If the quote is eye-watering maybe it is telling you something.

i have never subscribed to the idea that German cars are bombproof. Industry data definitely does not support that, especially in the fairly recent past. Personal experience (that unreliable barometer) is that Honda and Volvo are better engineered and built. Oh, and 1970's Triumph Stags.

Bruce

1970's Triumph Stags maybe reliable now ,but not in the '70s.

I wish I could impart some useful words of wisdom here however given what I run as my only car I'd suggest that the SL sounds like a dream of comfort and reliability... :hehe:

Phil

I bought a 1994 Mercedes E320 cabriolet 2 years ago. I beautiful car that still looks lovely. On a long distance drive in the rain I was did a right turn from a side road to State highway number one. Half way across it decided to have complete electrical failure and the engine cut out and I managed to wrestle the car to the siding. The lack of power meant I limped across this busy highway.. Fortunately no traffic oncoming otherwise messy agonising death. The electrics do not like condensation! From now on just drive it on sunny days and looking for a Triumph Stag!

Hmm. If I remember rightly the straight-six engine was a disaster, blowing head gaskets etc. and some owners replaced it with the 3.5V8 from the Rover. Lovely looking and sounding car though.

I'm a SL fan as you might have discerned from my earlier posts, Phil, but I must confess to loving the guttural and visceral noise that the TVRs make.  Intoxicating for us petrol-heads!   

The Stag had a V8 engine developed from two 1500 cc four cylinder blocks and was not nearly so bullet proof as the Buick Rover 3,500 cc V8.

The Triumph suffered from inattentive maintenance of coolant, and could blow up quite spectacularly from a long motorway blast if the coolant was remotely low.

The Buick Rover engine was by comparison a model of tolerance.

ATB from George

As a post script for engines of the period, the Red Block Volvo engine of four cylinders [between 1600 cc and 2300] were a model of how a V8 three point two litre marine engine could serve admirably and quite economically in motor cars. Everything from the Amazon 1600 via the Saint's B 1800 sports tourer to the last of the 240s with indestructible 2.3 litre versions.

Volvo knew that it was as important to lengthen the stroke as bore out the bloke for robust reliability ...

ATB from George

I'm happy to bow to your better knowledge and memory here, George.  Triumphs had some troublesome engines in otherwise wonderful cars.  The superb Dolomite Sprint had a habit of blowing heads gaskets.  Many years ago one stranded me and some friends in Devon for a few days, and the garage needed so long to sort out the high-performance engine we had to travel home without.  Wouldn't have put me off owning one though.    

And Saab made the two litre Dolomite engine into one of the strongest four cylinder engines ever, and powerful too!

But Triumph never made a good engine from the 1930s on. Weak big ends if the oil was not changed very often, cooling issues, leaking head and water gaskets.

Of course nothing that a very regular service in the garage could not solve, but not robust like Volvo, Saab, or Rover.

But given plenty of TLC, certainly impressive from the performance point of view.

ATB from George

Thank you all for your replies.

Those who have expressed a flat view all reckon I should sell. Unexpectedly, no one has pointed out that unrelated failures occur as a Poisson distribution and thus may cluster by chance and not be a reliable guide to future form. I had recognised this before I first posted, but it didn't help me in my deliberations. It also shows how much I overthink and agonise over things!

Specifically:

HH,

I had something 'small and fun' before the SL. It was an SLK and it sustained just one failure - a windscreen washer pump - in 14 years of ownership. I loved the look of the SL and, although the fora are full of tales of faulty this and that, there is no matching denominator data. I hoped I might be lucky.

MDS,

Thank you for your support of my purchase. I think the SL a thing of beauty and that it was a wholly reasonable aspiration. Mine is black with ivory leather and wood inlay. The car has a full service history and, indeed, was booked in for a service at the time of the first fault, which at least limited time off the road.

Harry,

I have researched warranties - I can't imagine that the existing people will be clamouring for me to renew - and they would be £500-700 per year. This would escalate over time. Thank you also for your thoughtful analysis of the true cost of ownership and change. If someone turned up at the door spontaneously, I would probably accept a £3000 loss. Equivalent to, say, 3 years' warranty, but equally the total limit of depreciation I would sustain.

Conclusion:

On reflection, I am concerned that if I try to pass the unexpired warranty on, it will be plain that I have had to invoke it twice thus far! I think I will either operate a 'three strikes' policy or sell in February/March - a better time of year to sell a convertible maybe. It would have to be a private sale, as any garage would only take the car in as a part-exchange against some expensive replacement, which (a) I don't want and (b) could itself be a dog, of course. I shall then reassume the one-car model and drive my Audi A3 into the ground.

Thank you all again for your help.

Fraser

Actually the 'two Dolomites stuck together' origin of the Triump V8 is also a myth. The engine actually had some Saab origins and was designed as a V8 originally, later given rise to the 4cykinders variants. The issues of reliabilty etc are complex and relate to design, manufacturing and maintenance, largely of cooling.

my original 1972 car can be seen in a pic in my profile. It has been more reliable than the OP's car this year at least!

Bruce where did you get your info on the V8?

All the references I've seen have all said the V8 was an "amalgam" of 2 of the 1.5/2.0L IL4s.

This from Stag Owners Club for instance:-

"In essence this engine was developed from two banked 4 cyclinder Dolomite blocks developed for the Saab 99."