The roof on my smart cabrio wont open. When i went to mechanic, they said i have to go to Smart Mercedes to fix, i called a few garages and they all said the same. I dont want to go to Smart mercedes because it takes forever, they do a bad job and it costs a fortune, PLUS i dont belive that another garage cant fix it, its only something wrong with the roof engine mechanism obviously, so what is this, some internal car mechanical politics that i dont knpw about?
Yep, It's called Mercedes. They have the parts and are about the ONLY source for them. Now you see why buying a niche vehicle is not a fun thing. It's like owning any other oddball, parts are dealer only.
Ok, understandable, thats business, but why can i do it with say VW, or any other brand without a problem? Its just smart that i have this parts problem, and not just the roof, any other car and any garage can fix the car??? Its a smart as well, id understand a porsche or ferrari, but not a smart, as overpriced as it is....
look in the yellow pages for an independant import auto repair shop. As bad as they are if your not a doctor making $260,000 per year you stick with a ford chev or dodge. If you want to go import maybe go with toyota. The honda dealer where i live is does poor work and charges a lot, so honda is a bad choice in my town.
Because it is a niche vehicle that does NOT have parts support from the aftermarket.
Think of it this way. If your company makes replacement parts would you spend a few hundred thousand developing a part for a vehicle that only sold 10 thousand units, OR would you spend the money on a part for a vehicle that sold 10 million units?
VW sells millions of vehicles a year, so does Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, Chrysler, and a couple others. BUT Mercedes sales in the U.S. may top
200,000 vehicles this year. The Smart cars may hit 10,000 sales. There just isn't a customer base to justify the production of many extra parts.
In the case of the Smart vehicles. Mercedes does not sell parts to anyone but the dealers. Independent shops can sometimes get the parts through them BUT the price will be almost double what the dealer would charge if they were installing it. That is the way many of the smaller companies do business. The popular theme they tout is that "ONLY a INSERT MINOR MAKE dealer is qualified to work on them, so only they get parts"
A compounding factor is that the Smart (stupid?) car has almost zero parts commonality with any OTHER Benz product. Normally when the aftermarket develops a replacement part, it will work on a fair number of models. A waterpump for a Chrysler 3.5 is the same whether its in a
300, Charger, Magnum, or Avenger. A waterpump for a Benz 3.2L v6 is the same whether its in an E-class or a C-class. Even a Prius has some parts overlap with a Camry. But the Smart (stupid?) is really about as oddball as a Yugo when it comes to aftermarket support.
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