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Misaligned Trunk Lid - 2005 Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG Long-Term Road Test
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Misaligned Trunk Lid - 2005 Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG Long-Term Road Test
Our long-term 2005 Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG is starting to show its age in a few places, one of which is its misaligned trunk lid.
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An average owner would most certainly have replaced the struts. They would have gone to the dealer and complained that the trunk suddenly started closing really hard and fast. The dealer would have looked at the issue and recommended that the struts be replaced. Voila, the issue would be fixed.
That is really more to do with Edmunds than the car. This clearly wasn't the type of vehicle that anyone on staff really wanted. They thought they were buying a flashy V12 monster. What they really bought was a classy old-school luxury car with subtle performance and a design mission to fly under the radar. I think most people on Edmunds' staff aren't really car people anymore. They wanted this car to be something it wasn't and when it didn't measure up they just stopped driving it, rather than appreciating it for what it really is: a fine luxury automobile.
The 911 was interesting because people loved driving it and so wrote interesting things about it.
The Lexus ES300 experiment was interesting because it is the sort of thing I would actually do myself.
The Miata WAS interesting, until they started writing about it once a year, at which point it became not worth the effort to keep up or give a crap.
The Ferrari 308 was interesting because it's an "affordable" Ferrari and so I enjoyed reading about what they went through to keep it going.
The NSX was mostly interesting. Again that was because the staff was engaged and actively wanted to drive it. So they made an effort to use it and write about more than things like misaligned deck lids and how it was ignored at a meeting of tuner cars and high buck Italian exotics.
Only if they bought the struts themselves from an online retailer. Getting that done at the dealer would most certainly have cost a few hundred dollars.
To whit:
http://www.edmunds.com/nissan/rogue/2014/long-term-road-test/2014-nissan-rogue-sunroof-warmth.html
Now you have one of their staffers noticing the erratic trunk-closing performance, and he's going, "wow - wonder what that is..."
There are some car people there and some not...what I see is their fleet manager just never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity on catching stuff like this...especially stuff that commenters clue them in on.
I can understand not fixing most small problems if you've got a beater that's a high-mileage daily driver, but in most cases, it's better to fix things when they go wrong and do the maintenance to prevent things from breaking in the first place.
I'd imagine that someone who buys a car like this in new or lightly-used condition will have the finances (and hopefully the motivation) to keep it in great shape. That being said, considering the age of the car, I don't think it's completely unreasonable that Edmunds hasn't fixed the struts yet, since it's mostly a functional annoyance. However, if the hard closing can wear out the latch mechanism and lead to more expensive repairs, it would definitely make sense to get it fixed relatively soon.
By the way, is there no way to disable the power function and manually open and close the trunk? I would think that would be the better option until the struts are fixed and the trunk can close properly.