If you want to hear something scary, the instrument cluster for the W211 is not serviceable. The bulbs are designed to last 7000 hours which is roughly 14 years of driving.

If anything else goes wrong with that cluster though, and you do not have a warranty period on the W211 later on in life, the replacement cost is close to $2000.00 CAN.

This W211 car is an engineering marvel beyond approach in the marketplace right now. The harmon/kardon LOGIC 7 sound system is untouchable. The Bi-Xenon headlamps are capable of making night turn into day and the all LED brake lights on the Sport and E55 models are pretty slick at night.

If you ever wanted to buy a W211 used though, you will only be able to get only one model. This will be the E320. The reason I say this is because the E500 and E55 come with the Air Matic suspension system along with the Adaptive Damping function. That suspension will cost an absolute fortune to replace at mileage. These cars will be parted out and sent to the scrap yard after the warranty or extended warranty expire.

Most E500's and E55's will also come with Distronic cruise control which will be extremely sensitive to environmental problems like dirty roads and poor maitenance. The steering wheel sensor works with distronic and the pitch control to keep the car at a steady distance but, if tire pressure is off or you are in area's like Canada with dirty, slushy, grimy roads, this system will have all kinds of problems.

The sensors on this vehicle will boggle the mind.

One hell of a car to own brand new though...

Mike McKinney

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1989 300CE - 269,000 km
1994 SL600 - 59,000 km