“Mercedes’ new SUV is a techno tour de force, a standout player” says Road and Track early in their review, and that exemplifies the hype surrounding the launch of MB’s new line of SUVs. An ‘accessible’ Mercedes 4WD for the suburbanites; who wasn’t excited? Could the Germans do –cheap– affordable and reliable?
The W163-chassis ML has a tarnished legacy, to say the least. It earned Deadly-Sin status in these very pages, though not without some soul searching—and it has received less-than-glowing commentary. But remember the SUV-market context in which the M-Class was conceived: a segment full of outdated truck-based models tarted up with ‘luxury’ gingerbread, such as the Infinity QX4 (Nissan Pathfinder) and the Acura SLX (Isuzu Trooper), to name two of the many.
The market was open for whoever would field an SUV for the ’90s: built from scratch for the task, bringing a carlike driving experience while also possessing the SUV qualities buyers wanted. Mercedes and Lexus took up the mission; Mercedes got there first, launching in early ’97, with Lexus arriving a year later with the RX. Expectations and desire were high for the new M-Class, as it shows in R&T’s review, which gushes with praise from beginning to end.
In regards of the M-Class’ brief, Mercedes’ instincts were more or less correct about the real and/or perceived needs of the rising luxury SUV market. The M-Class was to be built on a new platform, offering off-road capabilities while offering carlike comfort and ease of use. A newly- developed Electronic Traction System would make any terrain suburbanite-safe. There’d be a new, cleaner-running 18-valve V6 engine. Aluminum suspension and drivetrain components would reduce unsprung weight. There would be all the luxury accoutrements typical of the era. And all of this was to be wrapped in the most modern-looking SUV shape yet seen. It would sell at discount prices (what passed for ‘discount pricing’ by M-B standards, anyway), and was to be assembled in a new factory in Alabama, USA. New workers making a new model with new technology in a new factory…would that equal out to lower costs? Could the company be overreaching?
German brands had developed such a reputation by the ’90s that their any and every PR spin was swallowed whole by the media and the general public. What was being offered seemed beyond the grasp of any company, but if anyone could do it, wouldn’t it be the Germans?
Well…not quite. The first-generation ML 320 was indeed groundbreaking for the class, but it soiled its legacy; Lexus wound up doing a better and more dependable job of what the M-Class attempted, and so gained better traction (and a better reputation) in the evolving luxury SUV market.
Further reading:
Curbside Classic: 2003 Mercedes-Benz ML 350 – Deadly Sin #1
Automotive History: Mercedes W163 – Conceived In Germany, Born In America
My boss had the first year model. Lots and lots of nagging issues. Took multiple visits to the dealer to clear up the bugs.
What he paid for its would cover two of my Ford Escapes with the same type of drivetrain.
By drivetrain, I mean automatic 4 wheel drive. We were in the snow belt of New York!!
As an example, during a snow storm, the three folks from the south with 4wheel drive were crazy enough to showed up at the office. Those who were native New Yorkers stayed home!!!!!!! Go figure!!!
Old dog 🐕 never thought I would see the day when upscale auto manufacturers would produce SUVS and crossovers, let alone make them the FOC US of entire line. Late brother owned several Mercedes (all trouble prone). Personally NEVER had any desire for Mercedes. This to me is just another glorified truck. Would not trade my Lincoln Town Car for ANYTHING currently manufactured, ESPECIALLY this!
Car companies are in the business of making money. In the case of Daimler-Benz, they have moved down market with a lot of their vehicles. It is paying off for them, too, because in 2022 they made 15bn Euro profit on 150bn Euro total revenue.
I am glad you love your Town Car. If I didn’t live in a congested city, I would probably have one,
You are correct. What puzzles me is that Town Cars, Grand Marquis, and Crown Victorias were extremely popular as livery, police, and taxi vehicles as well as personal use. If FMC had continued production, with minimal changes, I believe sales would have been strong ,making great profits with little additional investment. 🤔. My 2007 Town Car gets frequent offers to buy. There is NOTHING like it. This will be my forever Car. Easier to navigate traffic than you might think.
Evolving crash safety standards and a non-willingness to pour money into an old platform just to keep it legally crashworthy signed the Panther’s death warrant.
Why tell us on every post about what you own/drive and how fantastic it is compared to the subject of the post?
You own a blouted ineffecient old tech Ford, nothing classic or classy about that. Compare Lincoln Town Car with M-class Benz truck. Lincoln is more truck like in design than this Benz!
Getting to Kiwibryce levels of annoying.
Biggest mistake was not make it in Germany.
I’ve heard this a lot for German marques manufactured outside Deutschland, notably for Puebla-built VWs that were every bit as reliable (or un) as the platform mates imported from Germany.
What evidence is there that this Mercedes’s fragility was from point of assembly rather than location of the engineering and cost allocation?
I’m prejudiced about that with my Japanese-derived vehicles. My 3 J vins have been more reliable with better build integrity than my 2 transplants. Wonder what the manufacturing discrepancy is….
Dave, which make/model were these?
Made there: Toyota Corolla, Isuzu Trooper, Nissan Rogue. Made here: Nissan pickup, Subaru Outback.
My Mexican built Golf is identical to the German market car. Many of the parts are made in Germany in fact.
The North American-spec Golf is not identical to the German-market car, no. I can’t provide anything like an exhaustive list of the differences, but some of them are much less than obvious. I mean specification and configuration differences, though; I don’t have data (which is what it would take) on quality differences.
More broadly, I’m of two minds on the matter. Fanboy blather to the effect of ‘Sssssss, ewwwww, you had a Mexican VW; those are poopy, not like real German ones which are flawless and awesome’ grows tiresome in a large hurry, and is probably often motivated by ethnocentrism, racism, or white-supremacism. On the other hand, thoughtful and informed people with a track record of minding and combatting their biases tell me the Mexican-built VWs really were objectively inferior during some time period. On the other-other hand, I have (much too intimately) known/of piss-poor German-built VWs. On the other-other-other hand, I have known excellent Mexican-built non-VWs.
I think the problem lay with VW rather than with Mexico; it’s probably a lot more defensible and accurate to say certain car models built by VW in Mexico were generally inferior to same-model cars built in VW plants elsewhere. Same goes for whatever part of the Pennsylvania-built Rabbits’ poor reputation is real and not just an expression of prejudice.
Back to the Mercedeses at hand: it seems a lot of Mercedes fanboys have no qualm blaming the W163’s issues on American manufacture yet blaming the W210’s very similar issues on Mercedes having abandoned their cultivated/perceived reputation of ‘building to a specification, not to a cost’.
My 1977 German built Scirocco was a fun to drive car with some combination of poor design, poor components, and poor manufacturing quality that made it unreliable and I can’t imagine it lasting a long time (ie more than ten years) of normal use. Lots of stuff just broke. Our Mexican built New Beetle shares some of the same attributes but has always felt far more solid and despite a few “typical” VW issues, is still our daughter’s daily driver almost 23 years since it was new. Our Mexican Golf feels like a high quality car in all ways that are important to me; but it’s only 8 years old with a mere 40K miles so we’ll see how things go.
The only validity to where it was built was brand perception. A lot of Mercedes buyers in the US are, well, kind of snobby if I dare make such a bold statement. Foreign exoticness was still part of the luxury image of the time and I think for many the shift in manufacture from the mythical land Germany that had cultivated this image of abnormally high intelligence, meticulous craftsmanship and over engineering, to America, where the term “American car” was a punchline to a generation of buyers, was like finding out pop stars lip sync at concerts. The coinciding corporate quality dip Mercedes corporate spearheaded to mine profits simply correlated with it, and quite frankly it’s a cop out to blame the region of manufacture and assembly workers on it. Every problem the M class and the whole of late 90s and later Mercedes had was baked into them from the homeland.
Around the time I retired almost 10 years ago, the young couple across the street had a baby, and since I was now home more I soon noticed a first generation ML parked at their house occasionally. Grandparents I assumed at first, but when I saw it drive up once and several women got out with mops, buckets and a vacuum cleaner, then came back out and left a few hours later, I realized it was a housecleaning crew. The house changed hands about 5 years ago but the new owners still use the same cleaners. And they’re still driving that same silver ML. So at least one is pretty reliable. Or maybe one of the cleaners has an MB mechanic in the family. I don’t see too many other ML’s around anymore.
I remember the gaslighting ads touting its smooth ride with the little doggie drinking tea in the back seat. Meanwhile, owners complained about the harsh ride.
A customer took delivery on “one of the first in the area” (supposedly).
It was destined for a local pro ball player, who cancelled the sale when he was traded. Yeah, right.
Hence its availability to my customer!
After given a ride by the proud new owner, it pained me to say “nice set of wheels”.
He got rid of it within a year.
The W163-270 CDI (inline-5 turbodiesel, nice roar!), plenty of them still around here, especially outside urban areas. Most of them are silver, green or dark blue.
I drove one on a few occasions, it had an automatic transmission (no idea if a manual was available). A W163 with 163 DIN-hp, which was enough for that type of car. Nobody bought these with a gasoline engine anyway.
“If the exterior of the M-Class is future shock… ”
I found these understated, somewhat conservative looking.
I found (and still find) them unattractive in side view; the shape of the rearmost side glass is ugly to me. The Mercedes ML certainly did make the mould, though; lookit the profile of the subsequent Lexus RX and Chevrolet Equinox.
Agreed. The entire rear end seems oddly squashed, as if the designers accidentally pushed the initial clay model backwards into a wall and Mercedes just ran with it.
My father had a 2000 ML320. It was lemon lawed in 13 months for being in the shop 18 times. He stuck to Volvos and Lexus after this fiasco. He had a new 1988 300E for a few years before it was totaled and loved it. The 300E was rock solid, and saved his life.
I was 16 when he had the ML320, and one of the first times he had me drive it a long distance on the highway, the brake lights stopped working, along with the power steering. I was lucky that he was in the car, and told me what to do, as I was a pretty new driver.
When MB corporate got involved after this incident, a check was cut for the full price of the vehicle in less than 72 hours, and according to my father, the MB rep told him not to buy any MB or BMW made in America if reliability was what was being looked for.
The rep suggested a 2002 E320 wagon with 4Matic, which he could get almost straight up for the check, but my father went and got a 2002 Volvo XC70 that he put many trouble free miles on.
Still see plenty of these in Melbourne, Australia usually looking pretty beaten up. Peeling paint (like most vehicles built in 1980’s and 90’s – all makes and models, Australian sun bakes clear coats of paint), fogged up headlights, etc.
Not sure why people think the first gen Lexus RX was a luxury car, it was just a jacked up Camry wagon, not revolutional engineering, maybe revolutional marketing? Charging more for the Lexus badge on a Toyota Harrier/Highlander/Kruger, like Lexus ES is to a Camry sedan. We didn’t get first gen RX in Australia, second gen was a hit when it arrived and I still see plenty about and the car command high used car prices.
My personal opinion and observation about the Lexus RX: It kinda looks like a woman’s purse. A very nice Coach bag, perhaps. You’d be surprised at what motivates people to buy and that anthropomorphic aspect might very well have been a selling factor.
I’ve never paid much attention to these, and think I once referred to one as “that Mercedes minivan over there”. And from the back, they do look like a van. Then I sorta noticed that they were more of a crossover blob shape if viewed from the sides or front. So it’s gotta be a front wheel drive car platform with a transverse engine, right? The last thing I’d have ever expected is a ladder frame, longitudinal engine, and a transfer case with low range. Really?
But yes. I finally gained knowledge reading the two earlier articles linked here. And I still think the styling screams “forget me!”. It looks like the perfect getaway car… If you removed the emblems, it could just as easily be a Mazda MPV or a Kia Sportage or something else I’m probably forgetting.
Interesting! I just bought a car that’s a descendant of this – a Mercedes GLK 350 from 2014. (Halfway to vintage it may be, but it miraculously came with only 12,500 miles driven.)
Let’s make some simple comparisons to see the progress made in those 16 years. The GLK is smaller, but just a little. This Kompact version is just two inches less lengthy. Another two inches separate the GLK’s height (lower) and width (wider.) The older SUV is 200 lbs heavier. The newer V6 gets 100 more HP than its father’s smaller engine, but the new car gets about 4 mpg more. Progress as measured in 0-60 time? The old car took 9.2 seconds, about equal to an early Prius, while the GLK does it in 6.5 seconds, pretty close to a contemporary GTI. Nice work, Mercedes!
After learning to drive in W123s and being in high school when the ML came out, I have always absolutely adored the styling of these right from the get go. But the horrific reliability has stopped me from buying one. From what I’ve seen and heard (from owners and MB techs) the engines and transmissions are usually fine, it’s just EVERYTHING else.