A bad ground connection on a decorative light can kill the power steering, and one of the headlights an wipers... Without more details of the desing and just how that's possible; we can't say for sure... but it sounds as if some incredibly stupid design choices have been made in this vehicle.
What other such joys await undiscovered? "Don't double pump the brakes on a Tuesday if its over 60% humidity or the gas tank explodes?" Will each car be individually possessed by some demon that requires a propitiation ritual before the car runs?
They learned this from the Chrysler partnership, didn't they.
One undocumented feature of my car is the taillights being on the same circuit as the dash backlight. This is so when the taillights blow the fuse, your dash goes out, and you think to check the fuse for the dash, and that also fixes the fuse for your taillights.
I did not know this, and on occasion I would just drive without the dash backlight. Until a kind motorists yelled at me in Australian and I figured it out.
There is a lot about cars that parallels programming, especially if you work on your own cars.
No, this is not Chrysler thing. Mercedes and its famous german engineering is a feel good myth. One of their biggest fuckups happened in 1991 when they used bio degradable plastic wire insulation. All 91-96 cars defective: http://www.mercedesdefects.com/2008/04/wire-harness-defect.h...
I'm tempted to agree, save for the fact that I don't think anyone at Chrysler (even Lee Iacocca, after a three-martini lunch) would think of trying to sell people on an illuminated Pentastar hood ornament for their LeBaron or New Yorker.
They knew their customers, and more importantly, they knew that their customers knew about their q.c. history.
I wish I could remember where I saw it, but somewhere someone had the data on Mercedes options. The illuminated logo was most popular on the cheapest models; least popular on the E-class station wagon, which while not cheap, is far from their most expensive.
Its fairly common in fashion brands that the cheaper you get, the bigger the logo. Eg ralph lauren drops from massive, to small top left logo, to tiny, to entirely gone, on their polos as you scale the price range.
The usual explanation is that, the less money you have, the more the brand values as a signal. As you get richer, the brand matters less than the material/cut/fit/etc. Though if you go too far, then it reverts back to the designer that matters
I think that holds true for car modifications. Like cars with all the brand stickers for performance parts they don't have, or the cars with spoilers but no hope of getting to a speed where it would be useful.
MB should make that illuminated star standard and charge a fee to remove it. They would make a fortune on the upper models. I sure as hell wouldn't have it on mine.
Its not too uncommon for owners to remove the model designation emblems from the rear of the car too. If you bought the cheap engine, nobody will know how much money you didn't spend. If you bought the expensive engine, your boss wont know how much extra money you spent.
I always knew that badge delete was common in Germany, but after living here a while I really appreciate how clean it makes the back of the car look. Once in a while you see a car with like 5 different badges for trim, performance and whatnot on the back, and you think, "that looks tacky".
The only thing that's getting in the way of an even cleaner look is that the manufacturer badges are getting massive. I don't need to know at 50 meters that the car in front of me is a VW.
Thankfully for the other German manufacturers, BMW has released a line of grilles for 2020 that will forever distract us from whatever shenanigans are going on out back. MB had the award for Tackiest Grill nailed down forever with that light-up star thing - and along comes BMW to blow them out of the water.
I once had a 2000 Audi that had an electrical failure which causes my wipers, turn signal, and a/c blower motor to fail. You see they all operated off of a shared relay which died while I was leaving a toll booth during a bad rainfall in the summer. Lucky for me the rain stopped 15min later and I had a soldering iron at my destination. (The solder did not hold and failed during the return trip but it was a nice day for the trip)
Any ideas for the root cause? My guess is this stupid badge is connected to the CAN bus and the bus dies due to lack of ground, causing the other devices on the CAN to go into some safe state. I guess the article is exaggerating "power steering failure" - it probably goes into a safe state rather than completely dead.
I imagine it might just be on the same fuse as the left headlight. Bad grounding on the badge causes a short and hey presto a whole bunch of stuff conks out.
What other such joys await undiscovered? "Don't double pump the brakes on a Tuesday if its over 60% humidity or the gas tank explodes?" Will each car be individually possessed by some demon that requires a propitiation ritual before the car runs?
They learned this from the Chrysler partnership, didn't they.