My car picked up a nail on the highway and it blew a round hole about the size of a quarter in the tire rim. These are aluminum alloy low profile rims that came with my E500 2004 Mercedes Benz as standard equipment. Two months later I had a new set of tires put on the car and the dealer told me that two more rims were bent. I am an experienced driver (over 1.5 million miles of driving experience) and I have never had a rim go bad. Suddenly I have three rims go bad. I did not hit any pot holes or curbs or any thing other than normal bumpy roads. The dealer said I would have to pay for new rims and mounting. I complained to M B and their answer has been that the problem was caused by road hazard. I said that I know that the road had something to do with it but that this is not an excuse for using materials that obviously cannot take the strain of reasonable driving. Anecdotally I can tell you that a close friend is driving an S500 with the same low profile tire and he too has had to replace three wheels over a period of two years. I feel certain that it is the composition of the rim which is at fault since it cannot stand up to the road surface problems as well as a rim of the same material that is not of the low profile design.

- Lincoln, MA, USA