Production of the C6 ends

[russ92xmsed]

Someone needs to try it!

[casalingua]

IMHO, the reasons the C6 failed to sell is because the interior isn't classy enough for an executive car and the 2.7hdi simply wasn't powerful or efficient enough so tax and running costs were high.
I think the car should have been 200mm longer and had a larger boot with proper through load facility as well as more rear seat legroom, and where was the estate version. MerBMWAudi sell lots of estates.

I think it wasn´t as if the car wasn´t huge so much as poorly packaged. Citroen was or is supposed to be a forward looking company and perhaps the modern version of the DS wasn´t another saloon but a really sleek, low MPV. Honda did a fuel cell concept car called the Kiwami in 2003. It looked a bit strange but it was spacious and ultra modern. Additionally, the interior was far from good enough and seemed to mix expensive elements with materials from the C3 class. They seemed not to have been mindful of the astonishing quality found as a matter of course in likely competitor cars.

[Duke]

£5000 for a reason though - it's done 140,000 Miles...

If it was 'that' cheap it wouldn't still be for sale...

[robert_e_smart]

Yeah, I have no problem with driving a high mileage car, just wouldn't fancy spending anywhere near that class of money on it though.

If I had that car for 2 years it would have 200K miles on it and be worthless, an expensive way of motoring.

[casalingua]

What do you all think this C6 is worth? My feeling (not based on any actual knowledge) is £3500 for this exact car.

[robert_e_smart]

£3500 Absolute tops.

[russ92xmsed]

I had a quick squint on Autotrader and just a local search turned up many 5K C6's all with much lower mileages. Some very nice cars actually.

So I agree....£3.5K - £4K tops for this one. Especially as it isn't the range topper either.

[casalingua]

Legend has it that all parts for all Mercedes cars are still available, at a price. This means that they have stored and maintained the stamping tools and matching presses, the moulds for the plastic trim, in short the production lines for all their cars still exist albeit maybe boxed up somewhere. They also have to preserve the ability to use the tools. As important as the tools is the implicit, experiential knowledge of how to get the tools to get the right result. I don´t suppose you just throw a sheet of steel under a press and out comes the part just like that. All things considered that´s quite impressive. Or have M-B just stockpiled certain parts? I would be interested to know how they do this.

[robert_e_smart]

BMW also market a classic parts range if I am not mistaken.

[casalingua]

Yes, I heard this from a proud owner of a 1988 3-series. He just ordered the bits and along they came. Imagine if we could just order up the few bits that break quite often. I imagnie Citroen knew which things wore out fastest based on their reliability testing and then sales figures. They would have known window regulators were frequently wearing out and that pinion valves would go every 150,000 miles, for example. A small bit of calculation would have shown that a supply of say, 10,000 units would last ten years. The beauty of this is that the knowledge you could keep a car running would feedback into the showroom price of their new cars. The lack of that security knocks 5% off their expected sale price. Nobody pays list, do they?