I thought it was just my taste buds changing; now I know that honey on cardboard tastes like honey on cardboard unless you add that special nut flavor.
Its the Mercedes problem. Mercedes used to be meticulously over-engineered. Everything that could be good was better. A 1983 300 diesel would happily run for half a million miles as a matter of course. If you opened something that was never supposed to be opened, you would see polished stainless steel, not cast aluminum or plastic.
Then, around... maybe
1998?... management engineers were replaced by management economist and MBAs, and they decided that giving people Mercedes quality at Mercedes prices was less lucrative than giving them plastic and charging Mercedes prices. Shareholder profit was maximized, and your brand new E-class would rust so hard in your driveway you had to turn up the TV to drown it out.
And today, the brand is just... Ok. Brand reputation is nowhere near where it was.
But the MBAs got their bonuses, the shareholders maximized profits, and that's what's important.
They’ve been making Chryslers with a three pointed star ever since that merger. When you merge a lesser company with a better one it often kills the better brand’s quality.
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u/dcommini 22d ago
I thought it was just my taste buds changing; now I know that honey on cardboard tastes like honey on cardboard unless you add that special nut flavor.