Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, Vancouver’s best auto service experience. Seventeen time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. How’re you doing Bernie?
Bernie: I’m doing very well.
Mark: So we’re talking about another Mercedes this morning, a 2016, pretty new, last year’s model, you did an A Level Service, what was going on with this car?
Bernie: Well, basically the car was just here for a service, it’s a regular client of our, just recently purchased this car, used, again it’s a 2016 C300 that was due for an A Service. So that’s what we did on the car.
Mark: So it’s a really new car, don’t most people take their new cars to the dealer?
Bernie: A lot of people do, and there’s really no reason why not to take it to a good independent auto repair shop. Generally our rates, I know for a lot of these services, are a lot lower in the luxury car market and the quality of what we do is as good as I would dare to say, better than what you get at the dealer. You many not notice any difference but I know from an insider point of view, that we offer more than what’d you normally get at the dealer. Yeah, so I mean, it’s an individual choice but this client has been coming in to us for years and he bought the car used, has no attachment to the dealership that he bought it from, he bought it from an independent dealer.
Mark: So I’m going to throw you a little curve here, what’s included in an A Service?
Bernie: So an A Level Service is basically an oil change, that’s the heart of the the service and then around that of course is inspecting, a basic inspection of the vehicle underneath, make sure there’s no fluid leaks, an under hood inspection, looking at the fluid levels, adjusting the tire pressures. Of course these are very, like a lot of modern cars where they have tire pressure monitors and there are things where you don’t really even have to look at your lights in this car because theres a light that will come on on the dash to tell you if there’s a bulb burned out. We still look at them anyways but you know, the computer will tell you, hey this bulb’s burnt out or if a tire is low in air it will tell you as well. So it’s pretty good, pretty neat that way. I mean this car is a high end car but there’s a lot of even lower end cars that have all those features as well. So it’s pretty nice but nonetheless, we look at all those things and make sure it’s all good. I mean the car won’t tell you if there’s a small oil leak or something developing so you want to know these things ahead of time.
Mark: So what else is uniquely interesting about this car?
Bernie: Well the neat thing about this car is it’s got a 2 litre turbocharged engine and so it’s extremely efficient on fuel and it drives really nice, I mean it’s fast, really peppy. You’d never even guess when you drive the car around the block that this thing has a four cylinder engine in it. It’s smooth and fast and under the hood and I’ll share a photo in a minute, it’s a really nice simple straightforward engine even though it’s got the turbocharger on it. I think over the years this car will be a really nice car to work on because a lot of things are quite simple to access. We may as well just get into photos right now.
So there’s the car and that’s the under hood view with the plastic cover removed from the engine. If you look under the hood, of course, you won’t see this because there’s a big plastic cover that goes all around here. But you basically, you’ve got your ignition coils right here, four of them right underneath of the spark plugs, so really easy to get to. It’s timing chain driven like everything Mercedes, intercooler for the turbo here, the turbocharger is over here, pretty straightforward layout, pretty simple. The oil and filter, easy to get to underneath, actually filter here, oil underneath so overall it’s a pretty straightforward arrangement. And it really impresses me when I drive something like this, just how well engineered this car is in terms of that you know, it used to be, I’ve been working on cars so long, it used to be, that when you had a turbocharged engine you accelerate and nothing would happen and then all of a sudden it would be like someone just you know whacked you over the back of the head, it accelerated really fast and this car you can’t even tell, it’s completely seamless and smooth. A really impressive car.
Mark: How reliable are these Mercedes C300’s
Bernie: Well that’s an excellent question and we won’t really know the answer for a few more years to see what problems develop and this is kind of the interesting thing with cars, anyone can make critiques about a brand new car and go, oh this is fabulous, it drives so great but really down the road, how do we know how well it’s built? We won’t really know for a few years. Sometimes problems start to develop soon and that’s probably a good thing because then you can get everything covered under warranty, paid for which is kind of what you want. We do have cars with engine failures that happen early and that’s all great when it’s paid for, you don’t really want to find out abut those failures at like six years down the road when the warranty expired in five years. So hard to tell but generally Mercedes are pretty reliable, they just develop their own little problems here and there, but I’d say it’s probably going to be a really good car.
Mark: What about a five year old C300?
Bernie: Five year olds are good, yeah we don’t really see the problems with those and interesting, I mean, I knew we just did a video a few minutes ago about the C350, a 2010 and that was a V6 so it’s kind of like the entry level model had a V6 and now they’ve gone down to a four cylinder turbo for efficiency. So it’s kind of neat seeing, again the gas mileage figures you get in a lot newer cars is just way up there compared to previous models and still lots of power. So it’s pretty cool what’s happened with developing of cars but yeah, I like a five year old model, they’re fine, there’s really nothing we see going on with them but I would say don’t buy one.
Mark: So there you go, if you have a Mercedes in Vancouver, the guys to go see if you need service or repairs are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment or check out our website pawlikautomotive.com or our Youtube channel under Pawlik Automotive. We’ve got a ton of great videos on there, a lot of activity. Thanks Bernie
Bernie: Thanks Mark
