[manwagon]

The following review of Mercedes' marketing missteps in general and with the R Class in particular appears in the latest "Autoextremist.com" weekly auto industry update. Peter M. De Lorenzo is the author and his weekly review and assessment of the auto industry is inciteful, witty, dead-on and he calls it like it is.
While his comments on the R Class are tough to take for those of us who own one, it is not so much an indictment of the R Class as it is of Mercedes poor efforts to launch and market the vehicle. Styling, after all is subjective but a big part of the attraction with the R is that you won't see yourself coming and going. Also, let's face it, if ultra quality and reliabiltiy were the only attributes purchasers of these types of vehicles were looking for, we would all be driving Honda Odysseys!!
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Mercedes-Benz. From the sublime (the new, forward-thinking Ford) to the ridiculous (perpetually clueless Mercedes-Benz), the three-pointed star gang is out to reposition the dead-on-arrival R class yet again. Beginning with the 2008 model, M-B is taking even more cost out of the R class in order to beg, plead and somehow convince American car shoppers that their bloated wagon-thingy is worth a look. This after Mercedes blew the U.S. introduction of the vehicle to smithereens two years ago by pricing it into the stratosphere. Then, last year, being forced to cut the price by $5,000.00 just to see if anyone would show up to look at the bloated monsters. Finally, throwing incredible "friends-of-Mercedes" lease discounts out there in a desperate move to clear dealer lots of the things which were - how should we say it - chained to the dealer light poles. Now, they're dropping the R500 and R63 AMG V-8 models in favor of an R350 and a R320CDI in two- or all-wheel-drive versions (this after finally figuring out that 80 percent of the country doesn't need or care about AWD) and standard AMG-style body cladding. The funny thing about all of this is that Mercedes-Benz still isn't addressing the basic problem with the R class, and that is that their idea of what the American consumer wants rarely veers anywhere close to the market reality. But then again, this is a repetitive pattern with M-B marketeers, because unless it's an S class or an AMG-fueled rocket, they have demonstrated time and time again that German automotive market-think rarely meshes with the real-world American consumer. As a matter of fact, Mercedes-Benz marketeers couldn't spell marketing if you spotted them the "mark" and the "ing." So, to those illustrious M-B marketeers who remain lost in a fog of cluelessness, all we have to say is, good luck.