This blog should not have been necessary.

This blog should not have been necessary.

The only reason we're here is because of careless design, an apparent stonewalling corporate culture, and a failure to live up to their own stated standards.

Yes, "my mercedes rustbucket" is a story about how I came to understand my ML500 has a really stupid, engineering design flaw that causes it to rust (from the inside out, no less) and the journey of disappointment which MB has taken me on. I'm going to tell the whole story because I have since seen that this is across the board something Mercedes is hiding. I spent almost a year working in good faith with MB on this.

It's a story that starts with my third Mercedes -- a 2002 ML500 with everything but the phone. I noticed a very odd thing happening. A rust bubble was popping up under the paint on the middle of the driver's side door. When I brought it in for service mid-2008 (garage parked, always serviced on time, washed regularly -- anybody who spends these kind of bucks for a car and doesn't treat it well is an idiot), I commented that I had never had a rust problem or noticed rust on any of my Mercedes' before. I had a 560SEC here -- New England -- for 12 years and there wasn't a spot of rust anywhere the day I sold it.

The service fellow -- not the manager, who I've known for 15 years servicing my cars and will make a star appearance later in this tale -- says "oh, really?" I show it to him and he says, oh, "a rock punctured the paint and allowed water in and that's what's rusting."

That seemed reasonable. It was only later that a body specialist pointed out to me: there was no puncture hole. The bubble was coming from inside the door.

That's the small beginning but not the real beginning of the tale. Simple enough but it's been a long road since then.