I have gifted two Mercedes to co-workers. When I gift a Mercedes, it is not a Junker-typically everything is working. When a older Mercedes is maintained, they are fairly bullet proof. Something not often discussed. My current daily driver is a S500 with 230k miles. I have done almost nothing to it except oil changes and air filters in the past 60k miles, and also tires.How has that worked out, gifting a person who needs a vehicle something like a Mercedes? "Needs" kinda indicates a low finances situation....
You don't talk about fixing Camrys and Sonatas..
Nice how you combine your car interest with helping people.
The car I have "gifted" the most were GM 3.8L based vehicles. These vehicles, after fixing a few things like intake manifold gaskets, coolant elbows, and a shift kit in the trans with an upgrade to DEX VI, are also a near bullet proof car. Maybe an ignition coil, once in a while, but super easy to swap coils in these engines. I have gifted no less than two 2000-2005 Bonnivilles, one with the supercharged engine, and a 2008 Grand Prix. I moved on from rebuilding the 3800 series vehicles to Mercedes because GM uses the absolute cheapest steel for its brake pipes, where Mercedes uses a copper/ nickel blended brake pipe.
Near impossible to run many GMs long term because of GMs cost cutting on brake pipes. Yes, one can replace the pipe, often a very big job to do right, but for a few dollars per vehicle at the factory, GM could have avoided the issue. And they know about it well, and they have known about using cheap steel brake lines for the primary customer really hurts their base customer- but GM could really care less about their core customers deep down in their corporate value/ culture. So I switched from being a 100 percent GM guy for the first 20 years of my driving life, to buying the best vehicle I can, and will not buy a GM.