Still in it…

I change the oil in my cars twice as often as the factory recommends…a practice I’ve kept on doing with my Mercedes.   My first car, a 1973 Ford Pinto, got its oil changed every 2k and I am convinced that is how I managed to get over 136k miles out of one of those.   When I finally had to give it to the junk yard it was because everything but the engine was falling apart. When you popped off the valve cover it still looked factory new in there…a thing I was intensely proud of.

So I took Spirit in for an oil change this morning and while I waited one of the service clerks and I chatted about our mutual love of Mercedes-Benz cars and she told me something I hadn’t known.   The steel for every part of the body…the frame, the doors, hood, trunk, all of it…are all cut from the same single sheet of steel.   Where other car makers cut a bunch of doors, or hoods or things that are all destined for different individual cars out of a sheet…bang, bang, bang, one after the other after the other…Daimler cuts the parts for each individual car from the same individual sheet of steel, to insure that all the body parts have exactly identical metal chemistry, exactly identical properties of rigidity and strength.   And this little detail she said, contributes to the overall rigidity of the car.

This is why you pay the extra money for a Mercedes-Benz. It isn’t about the options or the luxury touches. Compared to other makes my ‘E’ class isn’t even all that sumptuous.   You get more dazzle out of a Lexus or a Cadillac.   But not that solid Mercedes-Benz feel.   That is why I bought the car.   I like having solid things in my life.   Solidly built things, that are made to last and that you know the hands that built them can feel proud about.   That solid feel was the thing I noticed right away when I first sat down in my uncle’s brand new 220D back in 1971, and even more so when he took mom and I for a drive in it. I’d never felt a car as solid before then. Back then you were use to American cars, even the upscale ones, being a little loose and rattle prone.   And even nowadays, my Mercedes is noticeably more solid than other cars.   Of course the basic design and engineering matters more, but this business about cutting all the body parts from one single sheet of steel is typical of the attention to engineering detail they put into these cars.   And that is why they cost more.   A little Economy Of Scale is sacrificed in favor of a little more structural rigidity.   It isn’t about spending money, just to be spending money.

Matthew Yglesias tweeted a question a few days back asking what if anything justified spending the extra bucks on one of the “fancy cars”.   I didn’t bother tweeting back as I figured that question probably got him a torrent of replies.   But it depends on the car and what you’re after.   If fancy is what you’re after then go for the options.   If it’s a status symbol you want then go for the brand you think does that.   Alas, that’s all some people see in a Mercedes-Benz, but that’s disrespectful.   I wanted the car they use to say of when I was a teenager, that the first hundred thousand miles you put on it were just for breaking it in.   Because there are so many roads, and so little time in a life to drive them all.

[Edited a tad…]