As a Brit I'm not terribly fond of either make, but I favour Mercedes because BMWs - however good to drive - have a rather unpleasant reputation in the UK, being associated with criminals, drug dealers and the like. It seems that BMW drivers in the UK find that nobody ever lets them out of side roads!

To me, the Mercedes brand has more cache than BMW, so i vote Benz...they are just classier cars...hence C-class, E-class, S-class, etc... lol

BMWs for me, they know how to make fast and sporty rear wheel drive saloons. Its waht they do and they do it well!

Mercedes for me.

Mercedes Benz - always!

I had the pleasure of driving many recent BMWs of all series and have to admit that it´s great fun on the road, but - they´re absolutely charmless. The last BMW I liked a bit was the E32.

If speaking of new cars, Mercedes, new model BMWs are too ugly to watch, especially 1-series hatchback, X3, Z4 and 7-series.

Do you mean my last comment or G-Mann, who started the thread?

I must say, that, if I look (from my view as classic-car-fan) to the cars of the 50ies, 60ies and 70ies, Audi was definetely not a part of the premium-league. Sorry, but I think, you can confirm that.

Why didn't you include Audi too? (Even if my answer is obvious...)

Compared with these unreachable classics, BMW is just junk:
http://www.m100.de/

For me BMW-cars have a bad repuation. New ones were used by notorius agressive drivers, and 3 Series-cars, especially Coupé's and Convertibles, are typcial cars for young Turkish and Libanese immigrants.

Yes, I'm presenting prejudices - but it's astonishing, how often you'll get confirmations of that.

I must admit, that I haven't any relations to BMW. Noone of my family or friends owns one. I remember just one time in my life, I was transported in a BMW. It was in the Mid-70ies, when a friend of my father took me for a ride in his brand new 520.

went BMW, for the new models, but tha classic Benzes (300SL'S mainly)