Do you agree with this ruling?

[theworm[$]]

A German court has ruled that Mercedes must release a man from a car lease deal after a dispute over whether he was too heavy to drive the luxury vehicle, Bild newspaper reported Tuesday.

Mercedes refused to release the insurance salesman from a lease agreement on his S-320 CDI model, arguing the multiple car breakdowns caused by his weight were insufficient grounds to break the deal.

But the Stuttgart court ruled in favor of the salesman, named only as Frank S., apparently on the grounds that the car should have been able to take his weight.

[brian_igo]

The Mercedes S-class is their biggest sedan. Visit any NFL training camp today and I bet-the-ranch guarantee you'll find several S-class owners who weigh a hell of a lot more than 350 pounds. They don't list a gross vehicle weight limit but I'd double my first bet that it is at least 1000 pounds of passengers and cargo.

The only part that should be affected by a large driver is the seat. Maybe this owner kept burning out the power seat motors, or the lumbar support air bladders, but this is a $80,000 car. Fix the damn seat.

[pippadaisy[$]]

And he went from a Mercedes to a VOLKSWAGON?

[poseidon]

LOL. Mercedes is famous for putting blame on customers for their vehicles' problems. They've been doing that for decades. I can use my own parents for an example.

My dad owned a 1980 240D and a 1981 300D. On the 240D, the power locks stopped working. My dad took the vehicle in for warranty work, and Mercedes blamed my father for the power lock issue, stating that he was resting his arm on the driver's side lock and that caused the mechanism to fail. The problem is three-fold.

1. The 240D was my mother's car.

2. The 240D was a manual transmission. Resting your left arm on the driver's side door sill where the lock mechanism was isn't exactly conducive for driving, figuring that your left arm needs to be on the steering wheel because your right arm is (gasp!) shifting gears!

3. My mother isn't a large woman. I'm not entirely sure it was possible for her arm to be where Mercedes was suggesting when you take into account where the seat position was, and, even if she was able to negate Reason 2, what would that say about the mechanical design of a Mercedes if a midsized woman's weight of an arm was breaking the vehicle?

The 300D had some other problems (I don't recall what they were, we just have never forgotten the lock issue), and my father was blamed for those problems as well.

Many of my dad's law partners had Benzes as well, and they would have "water cooler" stories about the problems that they experienced.

[poseidon]

pippadaisy said

And he went from a Mercedes to a VOLKSWAGON?

Volkswagens aren't the tiny things they used to be. If he's driving around in a Toureg (sp?), that could very easily accomodate him.