A Hitch in the Ointment

A Hitch in the Ointment

Mixed metaphors are a wonderful thing. People who use them are usually not the sharpest cookie in the jar. Take Donald Trump….please (apologies to Henny Youngman). He’s never metaphor that he didn’t like and he uses them so much that it’s hard to tell which he feels are intentionally doubled up and which he doesn’t even realize are metaphorical. And it’s not like he has a problem distinguishing between metaphors and similes, since I’ll bet he thinks a simile is like a watched clock that never boils. What can I say, when it comes to Trumpisms that’s the whole kettle of fish in a nutshell. Just the other day he said about this Coronavirus thing that once we get over the hump and open up again it will all be downhill from there. What can I say, the man marches to his own trumpet.

But back here in Escondido, the land of the pickup truck, I’m sweating like a bullet as the temperature has gone up to a standstill. It’s as plain as the egg on your face, you have to stay in the shade. And one of the things that’s making me hot under the collar is that Escondido Mercedes has quarantined my white 450 GLS for the simplest of work orders. I just want to put a trailer hitch on the car (I’ve owned no less than five of these cars and each and every one has had a trailer hitch.) I might not care except I actually do have a very slick motorcycle trailer that needs to get hitched to my car to be anything more than just a very expensive bumper ornament. As I have faithfully reported, Mercedes and I had to go through an after-market “you’ve got to be kidding me” pricing war. As they say, war is hell on wheels. After the last dance, we settled out that Mercedes Escondido would do the job at the pre-agreed price. It took the General Manager interceding to pull the Service Manager off his convincing Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) impersonation. But when you open that Pandora’s box, you will find it full of Trojan horses.

You may recall that on my 2019 BMW K1600GTL motorcycle with 1,800 miles on the odometer, it was taken into the Escondido BMW shop on March 5th with a programming system problem. That has now been 63 days, more than twice as long as the California Lemon Law requires to file a refund claim, which I did on on day 30 (I am awaiting the settlement offer from BMW). The German engineers still cannot solve the glitch. Well, I took my Mercedes into the dealership on Monday, April 27th to have this hitch wiring harness installed so that I can use relatively important features like have mandatory signal lights and mandatory synchronized brakes on my trailer. That means that my nine-month-old Mercedes that has 3,400 miles on the odometer has been in the shop with this problem for ten days so far (it seems to be a day-by-day thing with the service department). When, after two days, I was getting price pushback before we agreed on what we had already agreed, I asked for my car back and I was told it was all taken apart already with much of the interior removed to accomplish the wiring. I think it quickly became my best negotiating leverage point. I want to remind you that this trailer hitch is a $575 option if you buy it from the factory with the hitch. The real hitch is that any attempt at an after-market hitch seems to be a very big glitch.

Mercedes Escondido has given me a black 2019 GLE 43 AMG. Other than the big side-panel sign declaring it a courtesy car from Escondido Mercedes, it is quite the hot-ticket loaner car. So, when life throws you curve balls, make lemonade, as they say….somewhere and somehow. Did I mention the car is black? Did I mention that its been hot lately? Can you imagine how hot a black car sitting in the driveway all day can get? But a loaner car is a lot like a rental car and I just blast the air conditioning on Max when I get in and it cools down soon enough. I’m actually getting used to the car by now and since I suspect I bought the 450 GLS with its third row of seats and its top-of-the-line options (except for that damn trailer hitch), more out of habit than a pure sense of need for the extra space. As they say, the choice was as easy as falling off a piece of cake. But now that I am getting used to the GLE, I thought I should look up what one costs. It has occurred to me that I might be getting back into the Lemon Law business again only this time with Mercedes.

You see, the service agent has told me for several days now that they have installed the hitch and harness, but they they are unable to do the programming required without help from the Germans back at the factory. I couldn’t help but remind them that it is just a trailer hitch and not an Atlas rocket that I am strapping onto the back of the car. The lowly service agent just stayed quiet for as Will Rogers liked to say, “never miss a good chance to shut up.” I’m beginning to wonder what is happening to the legendary German engineering that has brought Mercedes Benz, BMW and Porsche/Audi to the pinnacle of the luxury car market. Maybe they are heading in a decidedly Volkswagen direction.

On a lark I have priced out the GLE43 AMG loaner and have been shocked to find that this much smaller car, presumably due to its AMG (A as in Aufrecht, M as in Melcher and G as in Großaspach) racing engine heritage, is priced comparably to the 450 GLS. The racing “heritage” is pretty much all you get because the cars, as best I can tell, are about making the owners feel like they are racers rather than giving them any racer’s mechanical edge. As opposed to being a wolf in cheap clothing, one might say it is a lamb in expensive clothing.

Compared to all this failing German technology, the vehicle that seems to be holding up better than all else is the American heavy metal of Tesla. A Tesla in the garage and two Tesla batteries on the garage wall. Who’d a thunk a few years ago that a start-up American electric car company would trounce the Big Three of Detroit or the Big Three of Stuttgart? Now there is the real hitch in the ointment for the ICE* for eskimos autorama on a hot Escondido skillet.

*Internal Combustion Engine