So I’m at Home Depot carrying out two sheets of 2×8 sheet foam insulation to the car.  There is no way I can transport 2×8 sheets inside Traveler, but I don’t plan on it.  By the car, I take out a utility knife and cut the sheets in half.  Then I open the trunk.  At the top of the trunk are two levers I can pull which unlatch the back seats.  When I bought Traveler, one of the options I made sure to get were the fold-down back seats.

When I owned the Prism, whenever I wanted to transport large items I had to literally unbolt the back seat and take it out.  The Accord had fold-down rear seats but they were awkward.  The latches were clumsy and the seat belts were always getting in the way.  Plus, the opening you got by folding down the rear seatbacks was surprisingly narrow for a car as wide as the Accord.

Why I have been a Mercedes fanboy ever since I was a teenager: every little thing on a Mercedes is engineered with some careful thought and attention to quality and purpose.  It is not just a sumptuous luxury car.  And especially the ‘C’ class.  Think of the ‘C’ not only as the baby Benz, but as a really nice, working person’s sedan.  It’s not nearly as sumptuous as the ‘S’ class, or even the ‘E’, but Mercedes-like, it’s deliberately targeted to a particular driving niche, with no compromises.  It’s not a luxury car in the same sense as the ‘E’ or ‘S’.  It’s a really nice four door sedan built as well as possible, for its niche, which are working class folk like me.  We don’t just drive our cars to work or to the beach.  We need to be able to transport things in them.  The car has to be a working member of the family.  Let me put it this way: the ‘C’ class has cup holders in it and you can get it in vinyl upholstery as well as leather.  I don’t think the ‘S’ even has cup holders.  A wine cooler in the back maybe, but not cup holders. You’re not supposed to snack in your ‘S’ class, you’re supposed to stop at a five star restaurant and let the valet park your car while you sit down to a hundred dollar dinner.  And I strongly doubt you can get the ‘S’ in anything but leather upholstery.  Most ‘C’ class owners actually prefer the vinyl, known as MBTex, as it is just as nice looking and feeling as the leather, but lasts longer and is easier to take care of.

It’s a working person’s car.  But built as well as you can build one.  And yes, with some very nice touches to it to pamper you.  But not at the expense of functionality and purpose.  Mercedes never does anything at the expense of functionality and purpose.  So I unlatch the rear seat backs and they just come undone with no problem and the seat backs pivot down smoothly and easily.  I don’t have to tug on anything or fuss with the latches like I did on the Accord.  I don’t have to mess with the seat belts.  The people designing this thing took the seat belts into account.  They are just not in the way.  And when the seats pivot down they come to rest with their backs Exactly Level with the floor of the trunk.  I put my foam sheets in, close the trunk lid, and drive home and I don’t get the feeling driving down the road that my car is any less solid with the passenger compartment open to the trunk then when it’s closed up (although the stereo does sound a little…odd).  I get home, I unload Traveler, I fold back up the rear seats and once more I don’t have to tug and fuss with anything including the seat belts.  The seat backs just pivot back into the upright position smoothly and latch firmly and solidly back in place.  Done.

Everything in the car is like that.  This is why you pay the extra bucks.  

I got a card the other day, ostensibly from Mercedes-Benz USA, telling me that an update to Traveler’s navigation system was available.  If I ordered Right Now, said the card, I could get it at a reduced price.  I say ostensibly because the card actually came from the company that makes the nav software, not Mercedes-Benz USA, and they got my name completely wrong.  There is no Joseph Sciametta living here that I am aware of.  Not even one of the usual misspellings like Garret or Ganet or Garnet, but Sciametta.  And ‘reduced price’ is two-hundred dollars.  Swell.  I hate to think what the list price is.

So I call Mercedes-Benz USA customer support and make sure they have my name right in their system, which they do.  The cards were mailed out with the return address as a post office box somewhere in Orem Utah, but MBA headquarters and customer support center is in Montvale New Jersey, and the navigation software is made by Navteq which is located in Chicago, so I’m guessing the mailout job was farmed out to some third party outfit in Utah whose people were too busy making sure proposition 8 passed to get the mailing list right.  The 800 number on the card went to the sales office of the nav software company, and the web address seems to be registered to an anonymous re-direct service.  If this had come to me via email I’d have assumed it was some sort of phishing scam. 

I had an idea that the nav software update was out there though, because there was plenty of chatter about it on the Mecedes online forums.  One thread, asking if it was worth the price, turned into a DVD swapping party.  Someone got the bright idea to buy the DVD, install the updates and then pass it around.  The users formed a kind of chain letter queue, and as one person got the DVDs they would install the update and then mail them to the next person on the list.  I don’t know if any money was changing hands over this…I only skimmed the thread for information about the update, not how to get it.  Look…if you can buy a car like this it isn’t as though you can’t pay for the upkeep too.  It’s really unattractive for someone who can afford a Mercedes-Benz to be thieving the software for it.  But then, I have to keep reminding myself that not all the guys on the online Mercedes forums actually bought their own cars.  Daddy’s little boy and all that.  The downside to owning anything that’s above and beyond in quality and craftsmanship is you’re in the company of all the shallow louts who own one for its status symbol value and nothing more.

So I went to my dealer and bought the update from them.  The two parts department guys there both know me by sight now and it’s a pure pleasure talking to them.  They are both Mercedes enthusiasts like me and pamper their own cars completely.  I got my DVD set and headed home.  For a moment I thought I might just pop the DVD in and do the update then and there.  Good thing I didn’t.  When I got it home I discovered that it typically takes two and a half hours to update the nav maps.  Oh…and the Gracenote database.

Two and a half hours??!  What am I supposed to do…run the engine for two and a half hours or drain the battery?  The nav system in my C300 is on an internal 20 gig hard drive…not a separate DVD player as it is in some cars.  So it wasn’t just a matter of popping out one DVD and popping in another.  Which is good because a single DVD only holds about four and a half gig on it.  The hard drive system in the Mercedes allows for more detailed maps and you don’t have to swap disks if you take a drive from one coast to the other as you do with some cars.  But updating the software means copying over all that data.  So I went back online and checked the forums for anyone who had done it on battery power alone.  I didn’t want to kill the battery updating the nav software, but at the same time I didn’t want to be ilding the engine for hours at a time either.

After reading a few nav system update threads I got the impression that the battery would be fine.  The day was mild and the weather called for dropping temperatures and rain and snow later in the week.  So I reckoned better now then later.  Because I had to leave the key in the ignition the entire time, and I only have street parking, I took out my steering wheel lock and popped out the valet key from the ignition key/dongle thing.  I’ve said this before I think, but Traveler’s key isn’t a key exactly so much as a computer dongle that talks to the onboard computer whenever I stick it in the dashboard key slot.  But there is a small physical key hidden inside of it that you can pop out, and use to lock/unlock the glove compartment and the driver’s side door.  With that key in hand, I could put the dongle in the ignition, turn on Traveler’s Command system and leave the car while the software updated, locking the driver’s side door behind me.  For extra protection I put the wheel lock on too.

The update came on two DVDs.  You put the first one in the disc 1 position in the cd/dvd changer carousel and it starts the update program.  First it checks to see if it’s on a system that’s compatible with the update.  Then you get a prompt asking you to continue.  You click "OK" using the armrest Command function knob and then a progress bar comes up on the screen and some jazzy music plays in a continuous loop.  I muted the sound to save on battery life some, but I don’t know how effective that was because the sound system is still powered up even with the mute on.  But I thought it might help save on battery life a bit and I was worried that two and a half hours of running the Command system would drain the battery, even though the folks online said it didn’t.  After about fifteen minutes I came back outside to check on it and everything seemed to be going fine.  A half hour later I came back out and saw that the video display had closed back up.

Ack!  The car had shut off power to the Command system to protect the battery.  The DVD instructions had warned me that might happen, and said if it did to just turn on the motor and let the process resume.  I was hoping that wouldn’t happen because I didn’t know whether or not I could trust the update to resume gracefully.  But now I had no choice.  I started the engine and the video display popped back out.  When I saw the boot up screen I thought for sure I’d have to start the whole thing over again.  But the update program started back up, found where it had left off, and resumed.  I breathed a sigh of relief and let the engine idle for a while before coming back out and turning it off again.  For the next two hours I periodically started up the engine, let it run for a bit, and then turned it back off again while the nav software updated.  Eventually a prompt came up asking for the second DVD to be inserted.  Problem was, the first one wouldn’t come out.

The instructions say to just press the disk eject button above the disc slot.  But that button did nothing.  I tried turning off the Command system and then turning it back on.  All that happened was I got the disc 2 prompt again and the eject button still did nothing.  I thought about it for a moment.  The disc 2 prompt didn’t have an "OK" button on it, but I thought it might be waiting for me to respond anyway.  So I clicked the Command function knob as though there was an "OK" button there on the screen even though there wasn’t, and the prompt promptly went away.  The disc changer screen came up asking me to select a disc to eject.  I ejected disc 1 and inserted the second DVD and shortly after that the update finished.  So the map updates and Gracenote database update consisted of slightly more then a DVD’s worth of data.

I started the engine and turned on the nav system, checked the local map and a few functions.  Everything seemed to be working normally.  The folks online say the new maps have a lot more detail in them, with more points of interest indicated.  I’ll take a drive and explore the new maps later in the week.  The nav system is one of those things I never really thought I’d want until I actually had one and now I don’t want to be without it.  Just the other week I was wanting to go to a different Costco from the one I normally go to, because that one was out of something I wanted.  Instead of printing out a bunch of MapQuest maps and directions I just grabbed a street address off of Google and plugged it into the nav system and let it take me there.  Even when I’m driving somewhere I’ve been before, like to visit my friend in Stroudsburg the other day, I use the nav system to warn me a few miles in advance of when my turn offs are coming so I have plenty of time to get into the correct lane.  It’s really helpful.  I can just pay attention to the traffic around me and let the nav system voice tell me what lane I need to be in, and what exit to take.

I noticed it the day after I got Traveler Back from its service ‘A’.  When I shut down the car after a brief drive, the central speedometer display flashed a warning message that the tire pressure was low.  So I took my gauge out of the glove compartment and checked and it wasn’t and I wrote it off to a random spurious signal that must have happened when I turned the car off.  Some voltage spike that sent a signal down the wire that the car’s central computer misinterpreted.  But the next day it was back.  And the next.  And then this morning, while I was driving to the hardware store the warning flashed red on the display just as I was pulling out onto the highway.  I pulled over and checked and everything was fine.  None of the tires were low at all.

The problem with the legendary Mercedes reliability, is that from the mid-1990s to about 2005 it was anything but.  The company had a reliability problem…a bad one…mostly with the electrical systems…and owners and fans of the brand were getting royally pissed off.  But the company fessed up to it, and promised to make changes and do better, and from everything I’ve heard, the cars built from 2005 onward are much, Much better.  But I just know that every time something like this happens I’m going to stress that it’s a defect.

I’m assuming for now that something was done in the shop during the ‘A’ service that made the tire pressure monitoring system forget its baseline values and so it started complaining that the tire pressure wasn’t right. You’re supposed to reset the tire pressure warning system every time you adjust the tire pressure.  There’s a routine you perform…you let the tires cool down for at least three hours after driving, then check and adjust the pressure as necessary, then you tell the system to accept the current values as the baseline.  This morning I took my air compressor out to the car and, as a matter of fact, one tire was about 2 psi low.  But I doubt that’s low enough to set off the warning system.  In any case, I set all the tires to their correct pressure and then reset the warning system and then took Traveler out for a long drive and so far the warning hasn’t reappeared. If it doesn’t again then I think I can safely assume that it was a result of something the shop did during the ‘A’ service.

So…yeah…gasoline for Traveler is just going to be expensive.  It has about the same size tank as the Accord, but its V-6 is thirstier, so it gets emptied sooner.  And it requires premium.  I knew this when I bought it.  A Mercedes-Benz is just going to cost me more to own then a Honda Accord.  I went into that with my eyes wide open. For weeks before I bought it I stressed over whether or not I could afford it After I’d bought it.  Once I’d satisfied myself that I could, I went to the dealer and put my money down.  I admit I didn’t expect the price of gasoline to rise so…rapidly.  But there’s no getting around it.  So I’m more careful nowadays in planning my trips to the hardware store or the post office.  Is there anything else I need that I can get along the way?  Better one long circle then two or three trips back and forth.

Recently, the original equipment wiper blades on Traveler started streaking ever so slightly.  Most of you probably know how it is after that.  At the first sign of streaking it just gets worse really quickly.  So I figured today I’d go buy myself another pair.  Traveler came with a spare set, and my plan was to put the spare set on the windshield and make the new pair the spare.  And because I am such a Mercedes-Benz fanboy and I don’t want anything on my car that isn’t factory approved, I went to my dealer to buy the new blades.

I had a hunch they would be a tad pricey when the parts department guy behind the counter whistled under his breath when the part number came up on his computer display.  Sixty bucks.  That’s right…sixty dollars for a pair of wiper blades. 

Maybe it’s the falling dollar.  At least they’re lasting me about six months.  And I’ll say this about them…yes, they actually do their job better then the blades on any other car I’ve ever owned, including the Accord, yet their design is simple and elegant.  I’m a geek…shoot me…but one of the subtle little things that told me I was in a different world now was trying out the wipers and seeing how smoothly and thoroughly they cleaned the windshield. Partly that’s the odd little articulation Mercedes puts on the passenger side wiper to make it get more of the window.  But also it’s the design of the blade itself, which distributes pressure more evenly across its length then any other design I’ve ever seen.  In the package they’re actually curved inward.  When flattened out on the windshield every point along its length is exerting an even steady pressure against the glass.  I can swallow the extra cost of something if it gets me a better made something, and that is in fact the bargain you make when you buy into the brand; the theory being that a Mercedes-Benz costs more because it’s over-engineered a tad and that costs money.  But that means the maintenance is going to cost more too.

Here’s a lesson for all of you dreaming of that supercar you want to own one day.  Don’t buy it until you can afford the maintenance too.  Even if you see one in cherry condition on the used market and you can afford it.  Investigate how much the upkeep will cost.  I was reading on one of the Mercedes forums about a guy who bought himself a very nice "previously owned" ‘S’ class, only to discover that when it needed its next routine servicing work it was going to cost him close to a thousand dollars. 

The breakdown was this: the service schedule on the model ‘S’ class he bought called for the plugs to be replaced, and the oil and gas filters, really close to the mileage it had on it when he bought the car.  That’s something you have to consider when looking at a used car: when is the next maintenance due.  It had a V-8 engine with two plugs per cylinder and it used the most expensive plugs Bosch made.  The oil and gas filters were equally state of the art, precision made and just as expensive.  But that’s what you buy when you buy a high end car like a Mercedes-Benz.  I’m sure the top of the line BMW or Audi are just as expensive to maintain, and I don’t even want to think of what it costs to do routine maintenance on a Bentley or Rolls.  Between the parts and the labor the scheduled service on that guy’s ‘S’ class was getting close to the thousand dollar mark…

…which you figure someone who can afford one of those things new can also afford.  But not necessarily someone buying on the used, excuse me, "previously owned" market.  You may have bought the car for half of what it was worth new, but you still have to pay full price for the maintenance.  Unless you get it done in Butthead’s garage and junk yard emporium…and do you really want your lovely ‘S’ class worked on by Butthead?  Oh sure…a I can fix that…a little duct tape and glue and it’ll be good as new…and hey…sorry about the greasy shoe stains on your carpet there…

I could have held out for an ‘E’ class…barely.  I hear the new one coming out in 2009 is going to be really nice.  Sometimes I catch myself thinking that maybe after I’ve paid off Traveler I’ll trade up to one.  But if you can just barely afford the car, you probably can’t afford the maintenance too.  Unless I jump a few more rungs up the income ladder, a ‘C’ class is probably all I’ll ever be able to afford.  But that’s okay.  Every day when I go out for my after dinner walk I stop and just…gawk…at my car.  My neighbors are all probably getting the biggest kick out of seeing me standing out there nights just staring at it.  But there was a time in my life when I couldn’t even afford a car.

Today I just paid nearly seventy bucks for gasoline.  And that was at the Costco gas station where the price is about 25 cents a gallon less then it is most other places.   That amounted to just a tad under twenty-one gallons:   About sixteen gallons for the car, and another five in the spare gas container I bring along so I don’t have to make the drive to Costco as often.

According to the owner’s manual, Traveler has a 17.43  gallon tank with a 2.11 gallon reserve (that probably works out to some nice round figure in metric…), and I’d run Traveler’s tank down to the last 1/8th.   The fuel reserve warning came on around the 1/8th mark, but as I only had to put a bit less then 17 gallons in I’m not sure where they’re drawing the line at the reserve, unless there’s almost a half gallon of it that doesn’t get filled when the gas pump clicks off, which is possible.  Anyway, figure since it’s a Mercedes when the gauge reads empty it probably means it. 

The rising cost of gasoline is of course, why this all matters to me.  The more gas I buy in one go at the Costco, the more I save because I have to figure in the gas I use getting there and back.  It’s about eleven miles, so figure about four-tenths of a gallon spent, in order to buy gas at twenty-five cents a gallon less then the local stations charge.  At 3.26 a gallon, which is what the Costco gas cost me, let’s say that’s a buck-thirty I spend going to and from Costco.  I paid sixty-eight dollars for twenty-one gallons.  Around here that would have been about 3.50.  So my bill would have been 73.50.  I saved five and a half dollars.  Subtracting the buck-thirty it was only 4.20 I saved.  But that’s another gallon and four-tenths if I use the local price per gallon.  Or another way of looking at it, is I get about an extra forty miles.  In a year’s worth of local driving, I reckon looking at an extra two-thousand miles roughly, but depending on all the slop in my figures it might be closer to fifteen-hundred.  But I have to practically empty my tank before I refuel, to see that kind of savings.  If I don’t do that, and I can’t always it just worked out that I could this time, I don’t see nearly that much savings.  If I refuel at the half tank mark, the drive to Costco and back eats up the amount of money I saved buying it there.

I’m going to keep on doing this for a while, and watch the numbers, but you know…it might not be worth my doing this, even at twenty-five cents a gallon less.

I got rear ended last night on the way back home to Baltimore from a friend’s house.  Luckily, no one was hurt, and the damage to Traveler was only a couple minor cosmetic dings to the rear bumper.  I think.  I have to have my Mercedes dealer thoroughly check it out just to be sure.  But he hit me hard enough that I was certain when I got out of the car that I’d see a bent up rear bumper and some damage to the sheet metal back there. But it looks like the bumper took it and just popped right back into place.  I was pretty impressed with the design of that bumper after I got under the car once to study it a bit, shortly after buying it.  I’m a lot more impressed now.

The scary part was the driver admitted to me when he got out of his car that he had drifted off to sleep for a second.  I’ve no way of knowing if he was drunk or not, he wasn’t staggering or anything but he did look very tired, which could have been drunkenness or it could have really been he was too goddamned tired to be behind the wheel.  I told him if he was that tired he needed to get off the road.

Assuming he really was that tired it’s a good thing he saw he was about to run into me in time to slam on his brakes, because if he hadn’t it would have been a lot worse.  His tire marks were probably three or four feet long.  I had nowhere to go.  I was about two feet behind the car in front of me at a stop light, and there just wasn’t any time to get out of his way when I heard him slam on the brakes.  He hit my car hard, but not hard enough that the headrests deployed.  The C300s headrests will pop forward in a rear end collision to keep your head and neck steady.  These are the accidents you fear the most…the ones that just come at you all of a sudden and it doesn’t matter how careful a driver you are and there is nothing you can do but brace yourself.

While we were exchanging information two Arlington county police cruisers came up and we had to exchange information with them too but there was no question who was at fault and after making sure I was okay and I had all the other guy’s information they let me drive on.  I suspect they asked the other guy to do a sobriety test after I was gone, but as I said I’ve no idea if he was drunk or really just too damn tired to be on the road. 

I have routine scheduled maintenance coming up on Traveler anyway but probably Monday I’m going to have to take it into Valley Motors and have them give it a thorough going over.  If there is no structural damage I’ll try to finesse the little ding on the bumper where the other car’s license plate screw punched into it myself.  It would cost hundreds, if not well over a thousand dollars to repair or replace that bumper just to get rid of the ding, and even though it’s the other guy’s insurance company that would be paying for it, it isn’t worth the hassle.  They’ll want one of their own approved shops to do it and I’d probably have to sue to make them pay Mercedes to do it.  If there is hidden structural damage though…yeah…I’ll go through that hassle if I have to.  With relish.  Nobody touches that car but Mercedes-Benz.

…Still in it.

I had just been hired for a job as a contract programmer after a dry spell of well over a year where I couldn’t get any other work besides low paying temp jobs, and the occasional lawn that needed mowing.  The pay was great, absolutely great, better then anything I’d ever made before.  But the job was in Baltimore and I was still living a friend’s basement in Rockville and I had no car.  At the time I couldn’t afford insurance on one, let alone buy one.  So I was making due with various forms of public transportation, and my own two feet.  I’ll say this much…all that walking kept me in good shape.

So, with the help of a friend, I bought an old Ford LTD  station wagon.  It was a big tank of a car, with a huge 450 cubic inch V-8 motor, that had belonged to the mother of a friend of his, who used it for her gumball machine business.  She drove it all over West Virginia servicing her gumball machines.  The car had over 240 thousand miles on it. But at least it ran.  I named it The Great White, as in Great White Whale.  For over a year The Great White got me from Rockville, and then from Wheaton, to Baltimore and back, until I was confidant enough in my new line of work, that I bought myself a brand new 1993 Geo Prism.

One day shopping at the Rockville A&P grocery store.  As I walked out to the wagon I saw, on the other side of my car, two young women slowly walking in my direction, chatting idly with each other and taking very little note of their surroundings.  I had other things on my mind just then, but as I saw them I noted that I’d probably have to watch out for them as I drove away.  They were walking at a very slow pace, and chatting with each other like they were having a stroll in the park instead of walking through a busy parking lot.

I got in the car, closed the door, and started the big V-8.  Then I turned in my seat and looked back down that long tunnel of glass (the car was huge, even for a station wagon) and watched as the two young women walked just past my tailgate, and away from the car.  I turned around, put my foot on the brake, released the parking brake and put the car into reverse.  The transmission settled into gear with a loud ‘Clunk’. 

I heard the most hellacious scream I’d ever heard in my life, turned, and saw one of the women rushing back to the tailgate of my station wagon.  I saw her reach down as if to pick something up.  Then I saw her walk away again, leading a little toddler by the hand.  The kid couldn’t have been more then my own knee height.  The woman was chattering at the kid, scolding him I guess for not sticking by her side.  Meanwhile I was about having a heart attack.  I put the car back in park and had to just sit there for a few minutes and calm down.

I never saw the kid.  I was looking.  I was watchful.  I was paying attention to the area around my car.  I was being careful.  And I still didn’t see the kid.  I could have killed him.  You could argue that it would have been more the woman’s fault then mine….but so what?  I’d have had to live with knowing that I killed a little kid.

Flash forward to now.  When I bought the Mercedes I saw that there was a dealer installed option to have a backup sensor installed.  I opted out at the time of delivery, because I wanted to investigate it some more.  It was a lot of money, but I figured it would be well worth it if it did what they claimed.  So I checked things out here and there, and to cut to the chase, instead of buying one of the other aftermarket ones, I bought the Factory Authorized system instead, because in the end I just didn’t want anything installed in that car that wasn’t approved by Mercedes-Benz.  I was lead to believe by my dealer that there was a version of the system that had visual, as well as audible indicators, but that turned out not to be the case after all.  I really wanted something with a visual indicator too, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.  But I have the system installed now anyway, and just a little while ago I gave it the acid test.

The system consists of four small round sensors they install into your rear bumper.  When you put the car into reverse the system activates and you hear a single beep to let you know that it’s working.  It only starts beeping at you when you begin to approach some obstacle and the beeps increase in frequency until you are about a foot away from it, when they turn into one continuous tone.  For the past week I’ve been using it to gage how close I am to the other cars on the street, or the back of the parking garage at work.  As a parking aid it’s fine.  But that’s not what I bought it mostly for.

Today is my usual telecommute day, which means I’m home and most of my neighbors are at work.  Which means the street out front is pretty empty.  Just right for my acid test of the system.  I have several twenty pound sacks of bird seed down in the basement (I stock up on it for the winter months), that are about the size of a toddler.  Just a while ago I took one outside and placed it just behind the rear bumper where I couldn’t see it from the inside of the car, but I’d hit it almost at once if I backed up.  Then I got in, turned on the engine, and put Traveler into reverse.

Immediately the backup sensor started yelling at me.  Good.  I placed the sack at various spots around and near the bumper, trying to find a spot where I could put the sack, couldn’t see it, and my sensor wouldn’t detect it, which would allow me to hit it upon backing up.  I couldn’t find one.  The sensor always complained that there was something back there.  Nice.

Since it’s an electric gizmo I expect at some point the cost of these will come down and they’ll be available for all makes and models.  As you can see from the photo above, you don’t have to be driving a big SUV to miss seeing something that’s right behind you.  Eventually I think, these sensors should become standard safety equipment.  In the meantime, this wasn’t a cheap add-on by any means.  But better you feel it in your wallet then you hear it screaming in your dreams.

Via Benz World…

C-Class scoops Wheels Car of the Year

Mercedes-Benz has claimed Australia’s longest running new-car award for its ultra-impressive mid-size sedan range.

The C-Class convincingly came out on top of 20 new models after Wheels’ gruelling week-long testing program.

Wheels editor, Ged Bulmer said the C-Class stood apart from the field with its impressive combination of standard safety features, well-judged electronic driver aids, excellent dynamic ability, ride comfort, build quality and attractive design.

“Every C-Class model in the range shares these outstanding core attributes,” Bulmer said.

This was the 45th running of Wheels Car of the Year.

The 20 nominees for Wheels COTY 2007 were:

Audi A5
BMW M3
BMW X5
Ford Mondeo
Honda Civic
Honda CR-V
Hyundai i30
Land Rover Freelander 2
Lexus LS
Mazda 2
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Mitsubishi Lancer
Nissan Dualis
Skoda Roomster
Nissan X-Trail
Subaru Impreza
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Kluger
Toyota Landcruiser
Volkswagen Eos

Hey…it beat out two BMWs and an Audi.  Oh…and a Lexus.  The new LS no less!  Wow.  That’s gotta hurt.  The LS is to Lexus as the ‘E’ class is to Mercedes.  Now I wish I could find one of those Lexus commercials from a few years back where they show a bunch of German automobile engineers, presumably in the headquarters of some (nameless) German automaker, studying a Lexus ES (the ES is about the same class as the Mercedes ‘C’ whereas the LS is their flagship sedan) and of course they’re all speaking English at each other with these thick stereotypical German accents even though this is supposedly taking place in Germany inside a German car company, and when they’re told that the Lexus is "thousands less" then their cars the head engineer shakes his head sadly and says, "Now vhat do ve do…?"  Guess the shoe’s on the other foot now…

My ‘C’ is nowhere near as sumptuous as a Lexus LS.  But a good automobile is more then nice leather and wood trim and a high powered stereo system.  The best European car makers have known this for some time.  Once upon a time Detroit knew it too.  But the only Japanese car maker that I can think of who might now is Honda…and that because, so I hear, Mr. Honda loved to race.  That five speed Accord sedan I had was nice.  Had Mercedes not come out with this new ‘C’ class, I might still be driving it.

Well…no…  Actually I was ready for my Mercedes now…

The new Mercedes-Benz ‘C’ class got a big award back in its homeland the other day…

ADAC award "Yellow Angel 2008": Mercedes-Benz C-Class is Germany’s Favorite Car

Stuttgart – Jan 17, 2008 — Stuttgart – The Mercedes-Benz C-Class has emerged the winner of Germany’s largest vote for the most popular car by a wide margin. Accordingly the motoring organisation ADAC has presented its sought-after "Yellow Angel 2008" award to this Stuttgart-made public favourite.

The "Yellow Angel" awards, which the ADAC presents annually for outstanding performance, are named after the nickname given to the ADAC’s friendly breakdown service personnel and are among Europe’s most sought-after motoring awards. Consumers find them a valuable decision-making guide, as criteria such as price/performance ratio, practicality, economy, safety and environmental compatibility also play a part in the selection process.

The vote was between 36 vehicles which newly entered the market in 2007. Around 340,000 people cast their votes and awarded first place to the Mercedes-Benz C-Class by a wide margin over the runner-up. Europe’s largest motoring association – it has around 16 million members – rewarded this clear-cut result with the "Yellow Angel 2008" award for Germany’s favourite car.

…

Germany’s favourite car is also very much a bestseller. With 261,500 examples sold in 2007, unit sales of the saloon increased by 57 percent.

The C-Class has already collected several awards for its exceptional status in the mid-range segment. The readers of AUTO BILD voted it the most attractive saloon, the motoring magazine "auto, motor und sport" declared it the most appealing medium-sized car and 350,000 participants in Europe’s largest internet survey voted it Europe’s favourite car with the 2007 "Carolina" Internet Auto Award.

I’ll say this…as soon as I sat down in one at the Mercedes dealership in Hunt Valley back in September, I just knew deep down inside that this is the One.  But it’s great to know they’re enthusiastic about this new Mercedes back in Germany because I think it means the company really does have its grove back now.  Mine was made at a factory just outside of Stuttgart.

I’ve put about 7500 miles on Traveler since I took delivery back in October, drove it down to Disneyworld and Key West last month, and I haven’t had problem one.  It’s been absolutely reliable and solid in the way that I’d always admired Mercedes-Benz autos for, back when I was a kid.  And…it’s a beautiful car…in that straightforward, understated Mercedes-Benz way because when you’re engineered like that you don’t have to shout.  You just Are. 

This isn’t bragging…I’m obviously still in new car love.  Your mileage will of course, vary.   Some folks want the Corvette.  Some just gotta have that big truck or SUV.  Some want the Mini Cooper.  Some would rather have the Harley.  This car is me.  Absolutely me.

[New Car Love Alert…]

It felt…good…that first time I checked into a hotel this trip, and wrote "Mercedes-Benz" on the registration form where it asks you for the make and model of your car.

Traveler, my new Mercedes c300, has been a pure pleasure to drive on this first road trip with it.  If I could have dreamed up the ideal touring car I couldn’t have done much better.  It’s not as sumptuous as an E or S class, but sitting in one of those I might not want to be eating road munchies or drinking from my stainless steel Mercedes mug either.  Do they even put cup holders in the S class…?

Traveler is just a pure pleasure to drive down the road.  It hugs the pavement with that perfect balance of smoothness and tight-to-the-road feel that I have always admired in Mercedes suspensions.  I have a good view of the road all around me, and all the car’s controls are within easy reach.  The driver’s seat is comfortable enough to spend hours driving in and the automatic climate control handles everything from Baltimore’s winter chill to the Florida Keys hot sunshine with ease.  It’s been a few years since I’ve been to south Florida, and the intensity of the sunlight down here always catches the northerner by surprise the first time it hits you.  I started feeling it beating through Traveler’s windows when I got down to Fort Lauderdale.  Traveler has sensors that detect which side of the car is getting hit by direct sunlight, and by gosh when I make a turn and the Florida sun starts busting through the front window and right onto my chest, the car adjusts the vents and ramps up the fan speed to keep me cool and I don’t have to touch anything.

The car’s various safety and security features give you a nice sense of confidence on the road.  Going through several sudden and heavy Florida downpours on the way from Orlando to Key Largo, I got a chance to use my fogs…not so much for the forward view, I don’t think fogs are much help in a downpour, as for that nice little rear facing extra bright tail lamp you can switch on to hopefully let the guy behind you know you’re there in low visibility conditions.  I noticed one other Mercedes in the traffic bunch had done the same.  And I don’t fret so much while strolling around unfamiliar territory with Traveler parked somewhere, because the TeleAid service will call my cell phone if the car’s alarms go off.

My only regrets are that its trunk isn’t as big as the one in my Honda Accord, and that it takes only premium gasoline, which is running 3.60 a gallon right now down here in Key West, and 3.30 a gallon back in Key Largo, closer to the mainland.  But everything is more expensive here in Key West, especially the hotels.  The upside to Traveler’s taste for premium is that its appetite isn’t as bad on the highway as I thought it would be.  I was getting 29.7 miles to the gallon on the drive from Washington to Hilton Head, and averaging about 28 miles to the gallon on the rest of the trip so far. 

As far as the trunk goes, I’m still experimenting how to pack it.  In theory there’s enough space in there, but barely, for two sets of luggage.  But I tend to pack along lots of camera equipment.  And let’s face it…I’m gay guy and gay men tend to pack more clothes along.  And I’m a techno geek so double that for all my little gismos.  I have a white noise generator for noisy motel environments.  I packed a sleeping bag along because it’s winter back north and you need to be prapaired in case you get stuck in a snow or ice storm…like I almost did driving to Hilton Head Christmas week of 2004.  Also, the sleeping bag makes a good comforter if your motel doesn’t give you enough blankets and heat.  I tried…I really tried to keep it down for a simple weeklong trip, and I’m Still using Traveler’s rear seat area for storage.  If I ever find a boyfriend, I’m going to have to buy that roof mounted storage bin so there’ll be enough space for both our things.

Despite its expensive taste in gasoline, it’s Really Nice having that Mercedes v-6 under the hood.  It moves the car effortlessly at legal highway speeds and makes a very satisfactory German motorcar roar when passing slowpokes, which it also does quite effortlessly…serenely even.  And that even though it’s feeding torque to an automatic transmission.  That seven speed auto is sweet.  If I’d driven automatics like it back in the 70s I might not have grown up hating them.  This trans just doesn’t feel anything like those old slush boxes did.  It does highway shifts smoothly and solidly.  But where I’m really coming to appreciate it is in stop and go city traffic.  The bumper to bumper, stop and go shuffle in old town Key West with its tiny little streets was no sweat which is really remarkable because I Hate being stuck in traffic like that.  Not any more.  It may not be an E or and S class I’m sitting stuck in traffic in, but it’s damn luxurious all the same.  I just relaxed in my seat, turned up the Harmon-Kardon stereo, let the climate control system do its thing, and just let the car creep forward in drive whenever traffic moved a tad. 

This car is pampering me.  A friend who owns a C class warned me that the car would change my sense of what ‘normal’ is.  I think it already has.  I need to reward it with a nice bath when I get back on the mainland.
 

Not really…I support this web site entirely on my own dime. But you had to see this coming… Yes…I’m posting a Mercedes ad here. But it’s so darn cute…I just had to.

I need to find someone to translate that verbiage at the end for me. I can decipher “The E Class” and that’s about it. But notice…it’s a German ad, and yet the song is sung in English.

I knew when I bought my Mercedes, that I was buying into a culture as much as getting a nice new luxury car.  That was reinforced for me when I got an invitation from the Mercedes-Benz Owners Club to come to a new members reception last week. 

Most of the folks there were actually long time members, but I was surprised at how many came, and I had a nice time geeking away all afternoon with other completely smitten Mercedes owners, and sampling the tasty h’orderves.  The reception was held at a Mercedes dealership in Bethesda, that turned out to be much, Much larger on the inside then it seemed on the outside, in part because its service area was under the showroom and it was friggin’ huge.  The showroom was full of Mercedes, new and used (er…Previously Owned…), and I took advantage of the opportunity to slide into a few S class beauties and dream.

The dealership gave us a tour of their facilities, and I have never in my life seen mechanic’s stations so spotlessly clean, well organized, and so Spacious.  Each service bay had tons of room around it for the technicians to go about their work, and everything, their tool cases, their work benches, their computer terminals, all the hoses and electrical cabling, was laid out in an uncluttered arrangement that seemed to make everything easy to get at and work with.  I was told that the factory pretty much required that kind of thing from all their dealers, even down to specifying how the floors had to be tiled and kept clean.  That was no concrete floor in there…it was all ceramic tile.  Huge, and I mean Huge, air ducts changed the air out in the entire service area once every fifteen or twenty minutes and kept the place cool in the sweltering Washington summers.  Our tour guide, the head of the service department, said the dealership spent around thirty grand a month in the summer on the A/C bill alone.  He explained how Mercedes keeps track of all the work done on each car in a system that any technician in any Mercedes dealership can access directly from their service bay, and that each technician is sent for training and recertification annually.  

I’d already firmly decided well before then that no mechanic was so much as touching my car unless they were a trained and factory authorized Mercedes-Benz technician. I’ve never felt that way about a car before, but as I said, you buy one of these you’re buying into a culture too, and in any case they’re just different enough from the run-of-the-mill average everyday automobile that it made sense to me to just bear the extra cost of letting only Mercedes dealers work on it.  Things I’ve read since I bought the car, of how if even body work isn’t done by someone who knows those cars, it can degrade or outright disable the car’s safety features, only reinforced that mindset.  The effect of seeing that amazingly well laid out service area last week pretty much cinched it.  But I had to figure that service on these cars is probably a tad pricey. 

My car came with a little maintenance history booklet that the service folks are supposed to fill out and stamp and sign for each page of each scheduled servicing, and then tear out a little stub on the end of the page.  I had my first free thousand mile checkup a few weeks ago, and in theory wasn’t scheduled for any more servicing until 6 and a half grand, when I get a free tire rotation.  I get what Mercedes calls Services 1/A and 3 at 13 grand.  I assume that includes an oil change.  And there’s where I part company with Mercedes.

Traveler has synthetic oil in its engine, which is supposed to last for thousands more miles then regular.  But I have always changed my oil every 3 grand and I don’t see any reason to stop doing that now.  I got about 135k miles on my first car, a 1973 Ford Pinto for gosh sake, in part I’m certain by changing the oil every 3 thousand miles no matter what.  In the end you could pop off that motor’s valve cover and the inside looked factory new (unfortunately the rest of the car was falling apart but…oh well…).  When I go on my cross country trips I stop, religiously for an oil change wherever I happen to be, when that 3 thousand mile clock ticks over.  As far as I’m concerned, synthetic oil means I have a bigger safety buffer, but I don’t want to test it.  Oil changes are cheaper then new engines, even at synthetic prices, and this car was too expensive for me to not take fastidious care of it.  So I called my dealer, Valley Motors, and scheduled an oil change.  I had to figure I wasn’t going to be charged Jiffy Lube prices.

The lady I spoke with asked me if I had a service agent assigned to me.  I hadn’t known I was supposed to get one of those at my first thousand mile servicing.  She assigned one to me, and it was scheduled for this morning.

You pull right up into a long indoor service check-in bay and walk up to the counter where your servicing agent is waiting for you.  You get checked in and you hand off your key and the agent goes out to the car and collects it’s vitals (milage, plate number, vin and so forth) and then prints out a service order for you to sign.  Then if it’s waitable you go rest in a nicely appointed lounge where you can eat the free pastries, make some coffee or tea or grab a free soda.  The lounge also just happens to be next to a little Mercedes boutique where you can buy all sorts of Mercedes-Benz goodies…jackets, drink holders, factory approved car cleaners, anti-freeze, washer fluid, wallets, hats, wrist watches…

It took about a half hour and they gave the car a thorough washing and cleaning before handing it back to me.  They drive it back into the service check-in bay and call your name and hand you the bill.  It cost about 110 dollars for my oil change…almost but not quite three times the Jiffy Lube price.  But I was feeling secure that the only hands that touched my car during the procedure were those that know these cars specifically, and in detail, and that whatever they put into it was something that was specifically supposed to be there.  I figured most of the bill was labor.  But to my surprise the labor was only twenty bucks.  Parts came to almost 84 bucks and the rest was tax.  And most of the parts cost was the oil, which I knew wasn’t cheap being it was that synthetic stuff.  Nine quarts at almost seven bucks a quart.

I’m sorry…Nine quarts…?  In a V-6…??? 

When I got home I brought in my owners manuals and looked it up.  That engine holds 8 and a half U.S. quarts of oil!   A Ford Explorer V-8 only holds 6…I just Googled it.

Damn.  Damn!  They’re not fucking around are they?  The engineers figure almost nine quarts is what their V-6 should have on hand while it’s running, that’s what it gets, and never mind what the bean counters say.

Something else I learned while Googling this: the oil drain is on the Side of Mercedes engines, not the bottom, so if it ever comes out while you’re driving, all the oil won’t drain out of the engine.  Mercedes technicians use a vacuum to remove the oil from the engine during an oil change.  Another reason not to go to Jiffy Lube.

Okay…I’m a geek.  But this is why I always wanted one of these cars…

[Update…]   While Googling around and reading more about the synthetic oil recommended by Mercedes (which is the Mobil 1 type of Group IV synthetics), I’ve found that the consensus is you should still change the oil at the same intervals you otherwise would if you were using plain old regular oil.  The modern synthetics give you better protection at the low and high temperature ranges, which is why some high performance engines require it, but normal wear contaminants will still build up in a synthetic just as they would in regular oil, and the only way to deal with that is to change it. 

So it seems to be pretty much as I’d figured: the synthetic oil in my engine gives me a bigger safety zone, but the best thing is to keep changing it at the intervals I normally would anyway…around every three-thousand miles, though one guy said with advances in modern engines the air cleaners,  compression and oil-control rings and positive crankcase ventilation systems, he’s leaning toward five-thousand miles between changes.  But I’m going to stick to 3k.  

During my lunch break at work today I took a quick drive to my local Wild Birds Unlimited shop to buy a case of "Woodpecker’s Delight" suet cakes for my suet feeders for the winter.  I’ve been re-adjusting the layout of the feeders in the front yard here at Casa del Garrett for another try at defeating the local squirrels, and I’m hoping I can attract the variety of woodpeckers again this winter that I did last.  And of course, it was an excuse to drive Traveler, my new Mercedes-Benz C300 somewhere.

I was about halfway up I-83 to to the beltway when I noticed a rattle coming from somewhere in the back of the car.  I waited for a while for it to go away.  I tried ignoring it.  I tried to think if I had anything stored in any of the rear door armrests but I knew I didn’t.  I’ve been keeping that car spotless inside.  I tried cocking my ears this way and that to zero in on where exactly it was coming from and couldn’t tell exactly…just that it was coming from somewhere around the area of the rear window.  I tried raising and lowering the rear window sun screen a few times, but that didn’t solve it, nor change the tone of the rattle one bit.   I tried raising and lowering both the rear windows.  The rattle didn’t go away.

When I got to Wild Birds and parked I opened a back door and got in the rear seat and looked around for something, anything, that I could see might be obviously causing the rattling sound.  But there wasn’t anything.  I checked the seatbelts, poked and pressed at some of the upholstery and door panels, tapped on the rear deck paneling around the speaker moldings.  It all seemed as solid as the day I bought the car.  This had all the makings of one of those perfectly annoying car rattles that just drive you nuts until you find it.  Every car I’ve ever owned has had one of those.  But this wasn’t just any car.  It was my brand new Mercedes-Benz.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to know beyond any doubt that my brand new 45 thousand dollar car had a rattle in it.  Other then an outright mechanical failure, there wouldn’t be much more then that to demolish my sense of pride in owning a work of Mercedes-Benz rock solidness.  One of the delights I’ve had in the past few weeks in just driving that car somewhere, anywhere, is its exceptional feel of solidity as you drive it down the road.  That’s always been one thing in which a Mercedes-Benz is quite unlike any other car, except maybe the rarefied hand built cars of the super rich like the Bentley and Rolls.  A Mercedes sedan is a bit stogy, but solid as a rock, over engineered and high performing in a way its looks don’t advertise…the ultimate techno geek car when you think about it.  No way could it have a rattle. 

But that was what Mercedes-Benz was.  In the 1990s they stopped being that, to the discontent of many.  Then some years ago they owned up to it, and promised to start building them like they used to.  For the last couple of years it seemed like they had finally turned a corner.  They divorced Chrysler, they got rid of the CEO who led them downward in quality for the sake of his grandiose dream of making Mercedes the world’s biggest auto maker.  And I wanted so much to believe.

I bought my case of suet and barely looked at the other merchandise.  I was preoccupied.  Does the warranty cover rattles…?  No way was I going to allow my Mercedes to have a rattle.  Tolerating it was absolutely not an option.  Mercedes-Benz Don’t Rattle Goddammit.  I will Not allow it!  On the way back down I-83 the rattle returned like a chicken coming home to roost.  I was getting depressed.  I’ve owned a junker or two in my time and I know the sound of a rattle that isn’t going away until you track it down and fix it.  And the more I listened to it, the more it sounded like something coming from inside a panel somewhere.

I drove back to work in a funk.  This month I have many other things going on at work to occupy my mind.  Back home again in the evening, I logged into the servers at the Institute and did a little more work.  After rush hour had settled down a tad I walked out to the car, sat down in the driver’s seat, and thought about it.  I sat there in a funk for a few minutes.  Who do I know that I can get to sit in the back seat and isolate a rattle for me while I drive the car…?  All afternoon at work I’d been trying to debug a set of server configuration problems that were keeping me from getting some things done I’d needed to get done.  So my mood wasn’t exactly serene and peaceful.  But now that debugging mind frame I’d been in all afternoon took charge of my little rattle problem…

Let’s step through this…  Where’s the rattle coming from?  The back of the car.  What’s in the back of the car?

Well…the trunk of course.  I got out and opened the trunk.  Inside my trunk I have several items.  One is a big canvas pouch I bought at a truck stop ages ago.  It’s supposed to hang off one of the front seat headrest pillars down the seatback, and it has big pockets to hold a roll of paper towels, bottles of cleaner, a flashlight maps and other miscellaneous items.  I wasn’t about to hang it off the back of one of Traveler’s seats, so I put it in the trunk.  The other item is a small Rubbermaid container that holds my emergency kit…road flares, duct tape, tire sealant, heavy duty jumper cables, a large APC 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC power converter, a bright orange safety poncho and a few miscellaneous tools.  Also in the trunk was my window squeegee, the first aid kit that came with the car, the one I already had, and the spare wiper blades.  The first aid kit that came with the car was stowed in a compartment on the side of the trunk, behind one of the rear wheels, along with the spare wiper blades.  I took all of this out of the trunk, started up Traveler and took it for another drive up I-83. 

The rattle was gone.  Absolutely gone.  Back was the cozy quiet I’d fallen in love with the first time I drove the car from Baltimore to Washington.  I drove a short loop up I-83 and back and the inside of the car was as quiet and serene as before. 

One at a time I reintroduced the items back into the trunk, exactly where they were before, and did the same drive up and back on I-83 again.  Eventually I discovered it was the spare wiper blades.  They’re made of a very flexible rubber/plastic compound and they’d wedged themselves into a position where they were vibrating against the metal walls of the storage compartment they were in.  In Mercedes’ defense, that’s not where they were when I bought the car.  When I bought the car the spare wiper blades had been stowed in the front passenger seat map holder.  I didn’t think that was an appropriate place for them, so I put them in that side compartment in the trunk with the first aid kit.

From now on, the spare wiper blades go in the Rubbermaid container. 

[Geek Alert…] 

I was scanning my server logs last night and saw someone had hit this post of mine with the Google search string "can’t pull out key mercedes".  I hope their problem was as absent minded as mine was, or more charitably, that I’d forgotten how you park a car with an automatic transmission.  (Hint: you put it in ‘Park’).  But as I was scanning the Google hits on that string (my post was forth in the list), I got to thinking about the anti-theft technology in it the key itself.

I posted this shot of my new car’s key the night I made a deal with Valley Motors to buy it.  I’m wondering how many others reading it had the same first impression I did when I first laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz key…  That’s a car key???  It’s more of a dongle then an actual key, which makes sense given where automobile anti-theft technology is going.  The Honda had something in its key too, that the on board computer authenticated it with.  But it was also an actual key, in that it had a ridged steel shank like most keys that moved tumblers of some sort in a lock you turned to actually start the car.  Mercedes just took the next logical step and did away with the steel shank and tumbler lock part altogether.

I’ve wanted one of these cars ever since I was a teenager.  But when I actually took mine home, I found myself stressing out every night about it getting stolen while I was asleep.  I’d wake up at random moments and trudge over to a window and verify the car was still there.  A small, but non-trivial reason why I’m not leaving the car at home and walking to work every morning like I normally do, is because I’m still a bit afraid to leave it alone.  The neighborhood I live in has enough retirees in it that there are always a set of eyes somewhere keeping watch over things.  But I still stress about it.  A few months ago a small SUV was stolen from a guy just a few houses down from me.  But he’d left his doors unlocked, and an expensive tool kit set in plain view.  Still…I read about car thefts and attempted car thefts in the local police blotters for my district.  Lately, I’ve actually started mapping them out to see where the car thieves are most active.

Mine isn’t the only expensive car in the neighborhood…there’s others scattered here and there, and if you count some of the the big SUVs and pickup trucks there are actually quite a few vehicles within a few blocks of mine costing at least as much if not more then Traveler did me.  But a Mercedes sticks out.  I didn’t buy it for that…I really wish it didn’t, but last Halloween I had several dads walking their kids around complement me on the car, and ask me if they could check it out inside.  Of course I happily let them…I know the feeling, I had it myself for decades.  I gave them the whole tour of the car.  But afterwards it worried me that the car sticks out like that.  It’s bound to attract the attention of car thieves.

I’ve found that the best cure for the worries is to learn as much as you can about what’s worrying you.  So that Google hit prompted me to do something I’ve been meaning to do, to ease my worries a tad about someone making off with my new car in the middle of the night.  I started looking around for information about the anti-theft technology Mercedes is using now.  In the process, I got a bit of an education about modern automobile smart, or "VATS" keys.

The GM system, for example, uses a set of fifteen different precision resistance chips that can be embedded in a key.  The onboard computer knows which resistive value is supposed to work on its car and if you put a key with the wrong resistance chip in it in the ignition lock, the car cuts off fuel to the engine and starts a four minute clock that prevents the car from starting even if you insert a key with the right chip in it.  Ford on the other hand, uses a small transponder embedded in the key that transmits a code to the on board computer.  Some Japanese automakers use set of passcodes between the key and the car that rotate each time the car is started.

I was gratified to learn that Mercedes-Benz has a key so complicated it requires its own set of instructions.  Sometimes complexity is a good thing.  The moment you insert the key in the ignition a dialogue takes place between it and the on board computer, and the key’s digital passcode is verified and a new randomly generated passcode is assigned to it by the computer. 

At that point, the steering wheel and ignition systems are unlocked and the car is made ready to start when you turn the key.  I can hear the steering wheel being unlocked the moment I insert the key in the switch, as well as other very faint, gentle whirring sounds coming from somewhere inside the dash that I’m assuming have something to do with the climate control system powering up.  So even before I turn the ignition on and proceed to start the car, it already knows that a valid key is in the switch and its unlocking things and starting up other things.  It also grabs hold of the key slightly…not so much that you can’t pull it right back out again, but enough to make that something you have to deliberately do.  And the moment you pull the key back out the steering wheel re-locks and the faint whirring sounds stop. So the car is, in a sense, unlocked and switched on the moment you insert what it determines is a valid key for that car.

My car came with two keys…I’m not sure if there is an upper limit on the number of keys you can assign to an individual car…but the on board computer keeps track of the keys that belong to that car, and which passcodes it has randomly assigned to what keys.  There’s a set of button batteries in each key that are user replaceable.  Not sure what happens to the passcode a key has when its battery dies, but hopefully its kept in some sort of flash memory.

Other luxury car makers such as BMW also use this system, but Mercedes is unique apparently in that it did away with the steel shank portion of the key altogether.  Given the technology being used here, the shank part is now a tad redundant.  You can probably expect to see steel shanked keys slowly disappear from cars altogether as the on board computer takes on more and more responsibility for preventing theft.

Hence, the current popularity of car jacking.  If car thieves have to have the key in order to steal the car, then obviously they’re gonna try and get the key.  Usually that means getting it away from you.  So now I can rest a tad easier about the chances of my car getting stolen when I go to bed at night, or when I’m away from it.  On the other hand, now I have to worry more about dealing with a car thief face to face.  Ah well.  This was why I was bullied so badly in junior high school…so I could grow eyes in the back of my head for thugs…

[Edited a tad…]