hadnt realized till I stopped into Wikipedia that what my father told me back in the early 90's was wrong.. .The 190 isnt shit.. Mercedes says it was "over engineered" LOL
Yes, the 190E (baby-benz) was one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive) benz to develop, MB spent lots of money and time designing a well built, technically advanced, affordable benz, and it reached the goal. While developing the 190E they also invented multi-link rear suspension, by the way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wikipedia
£600 million was spent researching and developing this car with Mercedes-Benz acutely aware that a failure of this model could easily bring down the rest of their model range and the entire company’s reputation.
That's a lot of money for today, and even much more money in 1982.
The car is light, nimble, has decent fuel consumption, has an excellent suspension, and can really go fast if the M103 is turbocharged [700+HP, as i have seen on another forum.]
Bottom line is, not every people who drive an old benz are trying to flaunt non-existent wealth!! Some of us do because we love quality mechanics & engineering.
Vehicle: Black 560 SEC 'milked' AMG, White 560 SEC Carat
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 1,173
i drive a SEC, there're people in town who thinks i'm a rich wanker, i even overheard 'here comes the rich cunt' once...and there're peeps in town who thinks i'm a wanker for driving a mercedes when i'm not rich. So you just can't win really, both of you have valid points but lets just enjoy the cars i say.
In regards to the development cost of the 190, adjusted for inflation $600mil in 1983 dollars would be 1.2b in 2007 dollars. Assuming the pound at the dollar have had similar rates of inflation over the past 25 years, and how strong the pound has been in comparison to the dollar over the years you're looking at over $2billion. To which I'm going to say... BULLSH*T! There's no way Mercedes dropped 2 BILLION dollars on R&D for a single car. I'm not trashing the 190 BTW, just wikipedia.
Here's another meter.
John Delorean took 85million pounds from the Northern Ireland Development Agency, $22 million from investors, and $18 million from dealerships (in up front payments) from 1979-1982, for a total of (again, assuming like 1.8 dollars for a pound) 108 million pounds. With that he not only developed a car, but built a factory to produce it, created a car company and embezzled or completely waste like 1/3 or more of that money.
Last edited by crunk04gtp : 05-15-2008 at 12:08 PM.
Why is it that surprising that MB would have spent close to 2 billlion dollars on one car? They do develop the car for over 5 years. I dont think it would be possible to make a new car from the ground up for less than 1 billion dollars now.
Linear Mode
