Repair-It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_O_jg3JjPQ

Except this particular video doesn't actually finish the full dyno test...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAnWzVBvsbA

401k!

To everyone who is complaining and saying these (or Mercedes in general) are very expensive to maintain...If you can do the work yourself, and it isn't that hard, it's not that expensive.
On my E55, I changed the supercharger bearing ($50), breaks ($80), Inter cooler pump ($100), and oil changes every 3k miles ($50 each oil change). So it isn't that expensive and usually doesn't even take that long to do.

The only reason why it's "expensive" to maintain is because it's a "Mercedes". A shop will charge extra for that badge.

Tavarish said similar things.

But at the dealer, this car cost an average of $3200/yr to maintain over 400k. Not including consumables like tires.

I am both annoyed and jealous that a 2003 E55 is in a similar performance category (well, acceleration anyway) as a 2009+ CTS-V2. And that it is apparently not at all impossible to maintain yourself for reasonable money. Kind of disrupts my distrust of German iron. It is also the argument I had been making all along for why the 750iL is not the totally stupid purchase decision that it at first seems. But if I can get the drivability and performance I want from something American, I'll take that instead.

I talked to my friend who owns an E55 last night. I had previously advised him against buying this car, but he did it anyway, and it seems to be working out okay so far. It is not his daily driver, but it has had no issues in his 8 months of ownership (3 of which is was probably parked because it's in Maine) so that's something. I think it was an 05 with around 80k on it that he picked up for $15k. I wish I could stomach doing something like this because it might be better than paying twice that amount for a Vsport. If I was allowed to have 4 cars, I could use my $30k to buy an E55 and a scrappy manual transmission fun daily driver (Fiesta or Focus ST, Mazdaspeed3). This would give me the best of all worlds: an awesome highway road trip machine and a fun commuter.

That era of Mercedes does not have the kind of dynamic chassis that you like though, even though it is fast and comfortable.

Also I wasn't saying that the car was super reliable but possible to DIY maintain and repair.