I only had good luck with my W210. '99 E430 Bought in 2005 for $13K, drove for 5-6 years until it had 160K on the odo. The price was low because of a BAS/ESP warning light, which turned out to be a cheap brake light switch. It never stranded me, and the only real annoyances were a loud rear wheel bearing ($800 by an indy), and a faulty rear window module that took some patience to troubleshoot because of interaction with other modules via the CAN bus. Front ball joints were a piece of cake to replace.
The car rode great on the highway and had gobs of power. An econobox just can't match it.

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Prost!