[onewhippedpuppy]

I think there are thousands of current and former Mercedes owners that would disagree with you, despite their love of the cars. Sorry but you cannot drive a German car, particularly a 26 year old one, with the expectation that it will not require any TLC. If they were as reliable as you say, they wouldn't be for sale this cheap on a regular basis.

As for safety, it was designed before the age of modern crumple zone engineering. It has two airbags, primitive 26 year old single stage ones at that. Were you aware that airbags are supposed to be replaced every 8-10 years per most manufacturers schedules? Have you ever seen the damage that a "one size fits all" single stage airbag can do on a smaller girl that has to sit close to the steering wheel? Because I have. There are no side impact airbags, no pretensioners, no seat weight sensors to alter the characteristics of airbag deployment.

BTW, did you even watch the video? Many car enthusiasts consider the '80s Volvo bricks to be the pinnacle of safety, yet the Volvo fared worse in an accident with a modern cheap city car. It's not because the city car is a better car, it's because 30 years worth of engineering have come up with some pretty drastic improvements in safety. To be fair, a cheapo Craigslist Honda isn't going to have many modern safety features either, something from the 2000s would be a definite improvement though (and more expensive).