The other thing, (and this should be obvious), is that companies like Toyota, Honda and the newer Korean makes have a mission philosophy built around making the most dependable and low maintenance vehicles possible. They have excellent engineering staffs tasked with that mission and they succeed.
German high end luxury and sports cars are designed and built with a completely different goal. Performance is everything and if that means expensive brake pads that last 8k miles, so be it. This gets even more pronounced on the elite models like BMW M-cars and AMGs but you get the picture.
In the case of older MB cars, (like the one my quote in OP refers to), the German philosophy applies but the vehicle is very old technology and not terribly sophisticated or complex. They sold zillions of them and the aftermarket for regular maintenance parts has factories in China running 3 shifts a day. Brake jobs are cheap on an old 107 SL but the car was still built with the German rather than Asian philosophy, maximum performance rather than low maintenance within the constraints of its ancient engineering.
