what kind of mercedes? how much money can you spend?
you cant just say all mercedes are unreliable and expensive, my dad had an 82 sel, and that ran forever, hardly ever had problems and when it did have problems it was cheap to fix.
yeah obviously a newer 100 grand mercedes is gonna be expensive to own, but you cant compare that at all to most other mercedes, especially older ones.
it totally depends on what mercedes you want. some are as cheap and reliable as a honda, and some cost as much to own as a ferrari.
if you want something reliable and similar to a mercedes id look at bmw's, obviously some can be expensive to own too, but some are crazy reliable. a friend of mine had an e30 that ran for over 400,000 miles on the stock engine, and he was not careful with it at all.