Fancy cars

If you cannot afford one new you cannot afford one used. Multiply that times two for any of the high end with exotic V10/12 engines.

Plus, to be honest, a higher end 2015 accord will be more feature rich than a nine year old luxury car.

Depends entirely on the car and how keen you are on tinkering with them imo.
My first car was a 1997 s320 with 117k miles. Bought in 2004 for 12k..it's still going and has about 270k on it..was a great car except for the evaporator core failing.

Overall if you look at a car as something of a hobby you want to get involved in and get to know it works out for that. It is not the most financially savvy option ofc but neither is buying new. Looking at new cars is depressing for me because when you start picking out options you want you add 12k to the price of a 20k car. Those options are typically already on the 10 year old luxury car excluding electronics.

Porkchop_sl said:

What are your thoughts on buying older Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, etc... vs. newer, cheaper cars? For instance, I was readingthis articleabout a 2006 Mercedes S-Class that was on eBay for the same price as a new Honda Civic at $24K. This sounds tempting because i'm a bit of a snob, but is the maintenance and insurance on these cars really that much different? Is it a "only buy it if you can afford to fix it" situation? Would you still drive a civic or similar if you could afford a new Mercedes?

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Buy a two- or three-year-old Civic and then send me the rest of the money.

Picasso_sl said:

Depends entirely on the car and how keen you are on tinkering with them imo.
My first car was a 1997 s320 with 117k miles. Bought in 2004 for 12k..it's still going and has about 270k on it..was a great car except for the evaporator core failing.

Overall if you look at a car as something of a hobby you want to get involved in and get to know it works out for that. It is not the most financially savvy option ofc but neither is buying new. Looking at new cars is depressing for me because when you start picking out options you want you add 12k to the price of a 20k car. Those options are typically already on the 10 year old luxury car excluding electronics.

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Yea, sorry to say but just because you get lucky doesn't mean it's a good idea. Also 97 cars were a ton less complicated and that's pre turbo everything so one lost turbo totals your car.

How much is replacing one of those cool luxury features like one mist/wiper headlight assembly on a high end MB model, 1k+?

Ok it's a shitty idea.

Don't fucking do it bro. Out of warranty luxury cars cost a literal fortune to repair, even for minor things. There's pretty much nothing you can fix on those cars out of warranty for less than 1K, and that's IF you can even get parts. What's the point anyways? If you're a "snob" then you should realize that other snobs don't see you driving a cool luxury car, they see you driving an old beater of a luxury car. People who can realistically afford these cars trade them in every 4-5 years anyways.. I've owned multiple BMW's and the day the warranty is over I drop the keys off at the dealership like I was holding cancer in my hands or something. No way am I going to end up like the poor fools lined up at the service counter being handed 5K bills for minor repairs, or 10K for a turbo repair..

I had an S-65 a few years ago and they are wonderful cars if you can afford them. However once the warranty wears off the price on the car plummets due to the high cost of repairing the vehicle. For instance my hydraulic system went and once it goes your car can't be driven due to the weight and the lean on the car. Anyhow it cost me around 4k to repair the hydraulic system before it was all said and done. Don't do it unless you can afford the vehicle new like others have stated.

Cad_sl said:

Who the fuck takes out of warranty cars to the dealer?

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Lazy wealthy people and rich wives that don't know any better or couldn't care less. I see many out of warranty fools at the dealership getting raped.

If it's legitimate rape, the auto body will reject the bondo... or something

Friends of mine, brother and I drive old Mercedes for ages now and I can't say i found it a bad choice. I started with an E-220 switched over to an SL-280 recently. Friends also use C and E mostly. That being said, we are from Germany and both knowhow and parts for these cars are pretty easy to come by. All C and E that we drove were basically cheap as fuck. Buying prices between 3k and 5k with initial repairs that were between 0,5k and 1,5k (but most times we calculated them in when we bought the car). All cars were between 10 and 20 years old. Highest km count is my brothers with roundabout 350k now, still runs like a charm with little repairs. (If you have to repair it can get expensive for factory new parts at least)

That being said, if you want an old reliable car, I don't think these are the worst chances to take and you get a rather high amount of luxury for relatively little cash.

Now if you are looking to buy a newer high class car, like a 6 year old mercedes or so, then stay the fuck away.
Basically all highclass car vendors in Germany switched their building concepts about 12-15 years ago more toward that of all other car vendors. Beforehand they build cars that lasted basically forever even with mediocre care. Now they build shit that works perfectly until it runs out of the 3-4 year company leasing contracts and then start falling apart. In addition in our old cars there is little shit to get broke and often it is not that detrimental, because it only effects that single system.
In my fathers car (also a mercedes, but factory new) anytime anything breaks, for example the sound amplifier you have a 50% chance that 20 other things stop working too, because the signalbus or the computer disables it due to the error, sometimes the whole car as well.

Porkchop_sl said:

What are your thoughts on buying older Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, etc... vs. newer, cheaper cars? For instance, I was readingthis articleabout a 2006 Mercedes S-Class that was on eBay for the same price as a new Honda Civic at $24K. This sounds tempting because i'm a bit of a snob, but is the maintenance and insurance on these cars really that much different? Is it a "only buy it if you can afford to fix it" situation? Would you still drive a civic or similar if you could afford a new Mercedes?

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You'll look like you are too poor to drive a new one, unless you get a classic. Maintenance on Euro cars will make your bank account shit itself.