From: "tyler" <casi...@usermail.com> Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:47 PM
They had to make specific tradeoffs to make a cheap, and general purpose vehicle.
Extremely robust and durable (read over engineered) Absolutely. General purpose perhaps. Cheap, no. In the 1980's MB automobiles were quite expensive. My 1985 300CD listed for over $40k IIRC. In today's dollars.... a kings ransom. In the mid nineties at MB, the marketers took over and the engineers had to take a back seat so to speak. That was when the letter designation of a Benz moved from the rear of the model to the front. I.E. 560sl became SL500 and so forth.
It was during that period that MB became more tailored to the US market. Previously they were designed to run on the autobahns at 200 kph (125 mph) for hours on end, with US standards added. That is why a recently discussed Euro SO class was touted as extremely desirable. It had none of the US regulated crap on it.
Rick
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