After Mrs. Beard re-styled her Stilo and the insurance company decided not to repair it we looked around for something perhaps older but more interesting. As she didn't cover a great mileage we thought that something more powerful would be ok and looked very hard at a number of Mercedes CE320-24s which we were very tempted by. This was, reputedly, one of the last of the "Panzer-build quality" Mercedes and yet (I know they were up to 20 years old) the best of them had had almost every major component replaced even though they'd covered less than 100,000 miles.
Although the engine and auto box was generally still original, they'd all had head gaskets, radiators, water pumps, fuel pumps, injectors and all sorts of other mecahanical bits and pieces. Not to mention the fact that without exception they'd all had doors, wings, bonnets and boot lids replaced due to corrosion. Not only that, but I later found out that you'd be lucky to get better than 19-21mpg out of them.
Instead we bought an '01 Alfa 156 2.0 Veloce which has so far covered over 90,000 miles and a couple of years ago took 4 adults to Nice and (obviously) back again without issue, returned 35mpg.
So for me, the question Bimmer or mercedes?? The answer has to be Alfa Romeo.