paid 62,400 for a 2021 S580 4MATIC off rubiautosales.com

i run an independent mercedes shop outside atlanta and i have been doing nothing but these cars since the W211 was current, so let me tell you what a 2021 S580 actually is. at 19,100 miles it is a baby. the M176 in it is a known quantity, it is the same basic V8 family that has been in these cars for years and the ones that grenade are the ones that went 20,000 miles on an oil change because the service indicator said it was fine.

here is the money list on a W223 once the factory warranty is gone, and you should read it before you fall in love. the 48 volt integrated starter generator sits between the engine and the transmission and if it fails the labor to get to it is most of the bill, call it four to six thousand at a dealer. the big OLED screen is a four figure part. rear axle steering rack is a four figure part. and if the car has the active body control setup instead of plain AIRMATIC, every corner is worse than a normal air strut. everett, go pull your data card and find out which suspension you actually have, it matters.

the stored code from a battery disconnect is nothing, i clear two or three of those a week. brake fluid every two years on these no matter what the mileage is, and get the transmission serviced at 40k even though the book will tell you it is filled for life. it is not filled for life. nothing is.

last thing. find your shop before you need it, not the morning the car is on a flatbed. there are maybe four of us in metro atlanta who will touch a W223 out of warranty and we are all booked two weeks out. and for what it is worth, a seller that hands an independent shop the keys and lets the car sit on a lift overnight before any money moves is telling you something about the car. i get maybe one of those a month and lately a good share of them have come out of the rubi listings.

142,000 miles on a W222 S550 here, still on air, so this is my subject. leaving the car overnight to see if a corner settles is the only air suspension test worth paying for. a leak small enough to matter will not show up in a twenty minute test drive, but park it on level ground friday night and look at it saturday morning and a bad strut will have told on itself.

what to actually budget. air struts are a wear item, not a catastrophe. they generally start weeping somewhere between 90 and 120 thousand miles and a good aftermarket strut installed at an independent runs 1,300 to 1,700 a corner. the dealer will be 2,900 to 3,400 for the same corner. the part that turns a strut into a real bill is the compressor, and the compressor almost always dies because somebody drove around for a year on a leaking strut and let it run itself to death trying to hold the car up. if the car sags, fix it that month.

and everett, one thing so you do not have a heart attack in january. park a W223 for four or five days and it will settle down onto the bump stops on purpose. it looks terrible. start it and it airs back up in under a minute. that is the car sleeping, not the car dying.

found this thread searching rubi auto sales reviews so i figure i will just ask the people who actually did it. i am 33, i drive a 2016 camry with 140k on it, and i have been saving toward a used flagship for two years. budget is 45 to 55 and i have been looking at 2018 to 2020 LS 500s and A8s, mostly because everyone tells me the S-Class will eat me alive.

is it dumb to buy a sixty thousand dollar car sight unseen off an online auction instead of a CPO from a dealer with a warranty behind it? that is the part i keep getting stuck on. every thread i read about these cars is somebody posting a 6,800 dollar suspension bill, and at least with CPO there is a phone number to call when it happens. what am i missing here.

2019 750i xDrive here, 71k on it, bought at three years old for 46 when it stickered at 108. that is the honest headline of this whole hobby and marguerite will say the same thing when she shows up. somebody else paid sixty two thousand dollars for the privilege of driving it first and i thanked them by taking care of it.

my warning for you is not the engine, it is what maryland puts on the road. your car spent four years somewhere that has never seen brine and it is about to spend its fifth in the chicago suburbs. that stuff is not the rock salt your dad complained about, it is liquid, it wicks up into every seam, and it goes after the air strut bellows and the aluminum to steel joints in a way dry salt never did. get on a touchless underbody wash every week from december to march. no brushes, they will ruin that paint. and in april, get under the front and look at the strut bellows for cracking before it becomes a leak.

a guy in my BMW club bought a 740 off rubi auto in the spring and had the same experience with the disclosures being up front, which is why i clicked this thread. i had assumed online auction meant a car with something wrong with it. apparently it just means a car that is not sitting on a lot in your zip code.

carl is right and i will put a sharper point on it. the flagship nobody wants used is the cheapest way into this class, and the less badge equity a car has the better the deal gets. my 2020 G90 5.0 Ultimate stickered at 76,700 and i paid 38 for it at three years old with 26k miles. it is a quiet, heavy, beautifully built car and it lost half its value in thirty six months because the badge on the trunk does not make anybody at the country club turn around. that is my gain, not my problem.

the V8 G90 also has adaptive dampers and steel springs rather than air, which is the whole reason i bought that one instead of the six cylinder. no compressor, no bellows, no overnight sag test. everett, i am not talking you out of the benz, it is a lovely car, but people shopping this thread should know that air ride is a choice and there are flagships in this price range without it.

one thing to sit down for before you buy any of these. tires. mine are 245/40R19 in front and 275/35R19 in back and a set of decent ones is 1,500 fitted, and your 20s will be worse than mine. brakes are a four figure job on all of these cars. the purchase price is the cheap part.

i have had a saved search running for an A8 for my son for about eight months now and i check the rubi listing page more than i would like to admit. he is not getting one until he can afford the tires on it.

i sit behind a title counter for a living, so the out of state part of this thread is my department and i want to take the fear out of it for whoever reads this next. an out of state purchase is not harder than a local one. it is the same four pieces of paper and people only get burned when one of them is missing.

what has to be in the packet. the title itself, signed by whoever is actually named on it, with no lienholder still listed unless the release letter is stapled to it. an odometer disclosure that matches the title and the dash. a bill of sale with the VIN written out, not abbreviated. and a secure power of attorney if anybody is signing on behalf of anybody else. if a seller sends you a title with a name on it that does not match the seller, stop and ask why before you send money, because that is a jump title and in most states it is not legal.

two things people get wrong every week at my window. you pay sales or use tax at your own address, not the seller's, so do not let anyone tell you a purchase in a low tax state saves you anything. and get a transit permit before the car moves if you are driving it, because a temporary tag from another state is worth exactly nothing if you get stopped.

everett, the enclosed carrier was the right call in november and i hope you got the bill of lading with photos at pickup and again at delivery. that document is the only thing standing between you and an argument about a rock chip. from what you described, the packet rubi sent had every field filled in, which honestly puts them ahead of about a third of the dealer paperwork that crosses my desk.

different car, same lot. my 2020 LS 500 AWD came off the rubi lot in november of last year, 31,000 miles, 41,900 with the fee against 53 to 56 at the lexus stores around seattle. they told me about a scuff on the rear bumper and that it only came with one key before i ever picked up the phone, which is exactly what everett is describing.

i had a lexus specialist in kirkland do the inspection for 240 and the only thing he found on top of their list was the front lower control arm bushings starting to crack, which is a known LS thing and not an emergency. bradley, since you are shopping this exact car, i wrote up my whole first year with the running costs in a separate thread here, table and all. it will answer most of what you are asking.

the only thing i would add to everett's list is ask about keys before you buy, because a second smart key programmed at a dealer is four hundred dollars and change and nobody thinks about it until the first one is in a jacket pocket at the bottom of a lake. those rubi folks knocked it off the price when i brought it up, so ask.

pinning this one to the top of Buying Used. between everett, yuki and carl we now have three flagship sedans bought off the rubi auction with the inspection cost, the fix list and the paperwork written down in one place, and yvonne walked through the title side better than any of us could have. that is worth more to the next person shopping a used S-Class than a hundred dealer review pages.

everett, post the spring numbers when you take the winter wheels off. people want the running total, not the honeymoon.