BEnz doesnt meet up to the qulait and reliability of the Japanese these days.
no... I would not go so far in saying that. But I must stress that over the past decade, the quality/performance of Japanese cars have been catching up real fast.
Quite a number of friends and associates of mine have jumped ship, in the past 10 years, from MBenz to Lexus and never looked back. But the thing is, a Mercedes is still a Mercedes. I have owned various Mbenz since mid 80's, and am currently driving a c class sedan, the feel of it is just...solid when compared to other Japanese lux models. One thing I must point out ,is that, the parts of this newer Mbenz generation feel much cheaper than older models. As for auto electronics, the Japanese beat them hands down. Still, I love MBenz.
Although I dig the shape and design of Crossfire, I wouldn't go for it for that price. SLK platform based....so what, farking Chrysler's maintenance sucks big time. My Grand Cherokee was a $blood$ sucker. Thumps down for Chrysler.