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-   -   Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - W221 S350 initial ownership review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-term-ownership-reviews/118767-oh-lord-wont-you-buy-me-mercedes-benz-w221-s350-initial-ownership-review-14.html)

Congratulations Androdev, i had subscribed to your S-Class thread, and some days back i saw an email for it update.
I quickly jumped to the S-Class thread to be pleasantly surprised with this one.
It was a wonderful read to lighten up the day during these times !
Stay Safe and have great memories with this one too !

An escape from the cold and damp Bangalore, to the warm waters beyond the hills and forests.

Some super pics! Where is this?
Also switched back to the old rims? Or just for this drive?

Bangalore to West coast (Kochi, Mangalore, Goa) offers very scenic routes though some sections could be painful.

I use the stock rims (17") when I venture into rural areas that I am not familiar with. The night drive was a challenging one - there were potholes and visibility was poor due to heavy rain and oncoming high beam traffic.

We stayed at a place called Sai Vishram near Udupi. No frills vegetarian (no alcohol :)) resort, an option for BLR families when Goa is too far/busy. It's a bit weird that coastal Karnataka doesn't have very good beach holiday properties like Goa and Kerala.

Beautiful :thumbs up. So happy to see it being driven outside. These cars are built for the open road, but hardly any S-Class owners I know take them touring. I take my 530d each & every place, no garage queen this.

Thank GTO! For someone like me who breaks the bank to buy a car, it would be financially very unwise not to put it to good use. With a bit of luck and common sense, these cars are wonderful to drive in India.

I guess except for people like the enthusiasts on our forum, most people who make this kinda of money are A. very busy to be on the road for 9-10 hrs B. not likely to have family members willing to spend that much time together in a car. Traveling together by car really tests family values :)

Fuel efficiency during a recent Bangalore to Hyderabad (door to door) trip, thanks to fastag and smooth highways. Very brisk drive, just that I put extra effort to anticipate traffic to avoid needless braking/acceleration cycles.

Scenic monsoon drive in Namma Bengaluru :-)

Great review and an amazing thread! The S-class is really majestic and nothing else will come close to what is offers. I know it is too late to say this now but since I caught up on this thread recently, please allow me to say belated Congratulations on your S-class!

Wow! It is amazing to see someone taking an S class for countryside touring. I am so glad you are doing this and doing justice to this car.

In fact, thinking of it, I have almost never seen an S class outside the metro cities in our country. It would be a rarest of rare occasions for me if I spot an S-class driving on the rural coastal road. And now if see one in future, I will know it is you :-)

Hahaha. Well said. In my case the effect of traveling together is that my family is now becoming car enthusiasts and has actually started understanding and commenting on nuances of the ride quality and car dynamics, acceleration and braking.

Haha. Quite funny, and you are one brave person to take your S-class through this mess.

Anyways, jokes apart, amazing car and amazing the way you use it!

Just got the car back from annual service. Completed 9 years. Continues to be a trouble-free ownership. Good experience with Sundaram Motors and MB in general. I thought I will share a summary of ownership costs. The first spreadsheet I made for a car and I think it is a bad idea to have this level of insight. I prefer my big-picture approach :-)

Purchase cost (OTR) in Apr 2012: 1.0 cr (98L or so I think)

Summary costs:


Details:


Miscellaneous notes:
1. Never claimed insurance. Paid out of pocket on few occasions (for broken tail lamp, broken DRL trim, lost key)
2. One warranty claim to replace an idler pulley.
3. Spare wheel was never used, probably why spare wheels are skipped these day.
4. The car has seen a great deal of rural and back roads of all types of terrains of South India. It has also seen the early days of almost-empty newly minted highways and ORRs where everything would be a blur.
5. All the thousand buttons work and are heavily used by my gang who don't share my TLC - cause for many gentle arguments ;-)
6. Except for the bluetooth music streaming and a bigger engine, I don't miss anything in this car even after 9 years. Never say no to a bigger petrol engine if one has a choice ;-)

Am I seeing things or does it cost 25k to insure the mighty S for a year?

Insurance gets expensive if you have zero depreciation cover, etc. You can see the drastic drop in insurance premium after they stopped offering zero depreciation cover (from 7th year 2019).

Here is a quote to arrive at 27K premium:

Makes sense but never realised zero-dep could make such a difference. Of course value of vehicle would determine the zero dep amount, I believe. Could you share an older quote where zero dep was included?

The discounts have played a role to bring down the final quote (cheers to NCB!).

On a side note, what's Commercial Discount?

Yeah zero depreciation add-on is costly and they don't give much discount on add-ons. I am not sure about the commercial discount but I guess it is the "bargain/discretionary" component that the agent can offer. I am not sure though. If you use the same person to buy your insurance regularly, they automatically give their best offer.

Here is a quote with add-ons:

A bit perplexed at the service costs. Does this also include the part replacements? I assumed the service costs for the mighty S would be atleast 1L per year (your figure works out to 66K/year). Heck I assumed even the C class would cost around 50K per year minimum.