Peak Auto is located nest tot the Cary NC Auto Mall at 833 US-64 West in Apex NC. We specialize in high-end luxury vehicles and we are often asked what is the best German car on the market. Our first question is, what year? At Peak Auto we have our own perspective of a vehicle since we look at them mostly from underneath when they are on a left. We see more than the typical driver who spends most of his/her time behind the wheel.
It would seem the older BMW’s were more reliable and better built than the Mercedes Benz but in recent years Mercedes has far exceeded the quality of the BMW in my opinion. For instance ignition coils. since 2008 BMW has switched to a very cheep ignition coil, in fact it is even cheep to replace. We have seen a lot or “Service Engine Soon” lights come on and the vehicle experiencing a little rough idle or misfire. One of the coils is at fault. We have been replace these coils one by one, usually starting at around 60,000 miles to only find out recently that BMW has a TSB or Technical Service Bulletin to replace all coils. In fact the replacement coils have all been manufactured to new specifications.
We have not seen this issue on the Mercedes Benz. The BMW coils cost around $70 each and Mercedes coils around $250 but rarely see them fail. Mercedes does have it’s own issue, there was the counter-shaft sprocket on the 2005-2007 V-6. This repair was over $5,000. Mercedes did extend the warranty on this issue on a case by case basis, but our clients seemed to be treated fairly in this debacle.
In 2005 the EU or European Union passed a law removing lead form the manufacturing of automobile parts. Lead, we now learn made brass very very strong. In return, when you remove the lead the brass becomes very week. For some unknown reason to me, the German Manufacturers had to learn this after installing millions and millions of updated parts. We saw issues in the transmissions of BMW’s mostly.