Is Mercedes GL Class reliable to travel to Central Asia?

[Jia Shah]

Hi Guys,

I am Jia- me and my husband are planning a road trip from UK to Indonesia (early next year 2021) crossing Europe and then entering Central Asia. We are actually planning to do the trip on Mercedes GL Class probably 2008 model but we don't know how reliable it would be to travel to those countries in case car breaks down and we need to get it repaired. I have 2 questions

1. Is Mercedes GL Class reliable at all as we are weighing pros and cons and kind of comparing the reliability with Land Cruiser.

2. Can Mercedes GL Class be repaired in Central Asian Countries and how bad would that be in terms of money?

If anyone has the answers to my questions please get back to me so that we can actually go ahead and make our purchase.

Thanks

Jia

[Christian77]

I can't answer question #1, and I highly recommend that you post that question in an automotive forum. There are websites and forums out there with people who can give you very specific and informed answers.

For #2 you need to list which countries you will travel through, and which routes. For example, Tajikistan has a thriving second-hand Mercedes market and in all cities you can find a good mechanic who can work on Mercedes and who can probably find the part you need very quickly (but on the Pamir Highway you will have better luck with a Toyota as that is what the mechanics are used to seeing). And then there are countries like Uzbekistan with a restrictive market for imports, and a mechanic in a regional city probably never sees a Mercedes. So give an itinerary and people may be able to give you specific answers.

[AreWeThereYet?]

I met two Germans in Dushanbe who drove an old German estate from Duisburg to Dushanbe and sold it there. They'd just finished a ride through the Pamirs, with the Sary Tash-Khorog leg done in one day as one got a very bad case of altitude sickness. They had a 2004 E-class estate (the one with googly eyes, ugly as hell if you ask me) with 200,000km on the odometer. It worked like a charm.

Having said that, they were carrying their own spares and one of them actually worked on touring cars professionally, so they knew their stuff. I don't think there's a lot of experience on Merc SUVs in Central Asia, I personally haven't seen one (a bit like in Albania where you just see Mercedes sedans). I would personally go with a Land Cruiser, especially not a super-late model: there are lots of them throughout Central Asia and people are bound to know how to fix them. And you blend in a bit more.

[mazeno]

i think it is not as problem with the spare parts
troubles may come with the computer
if u see (in the place of nowhere) a mysterious error #528 what would you do
see the manual and find the tip
"call the service"

that's why i choose old cars
easy to repair with so called "russian wrench" (a screwdriver and a hammer)