Mercedes's $H**MATIC air suspension
 

A family member drives a 2006 R500 with about 70k miles.
And the shitty Airmatic air springs have been going out one after the other.
She usually comes to me for car advice; this is the 2nd one that goes out. The first one went out and she fixed it at a dealership costing her about $2400, now one of the rear ones went out and god knows when the other two will go out.

Can anyone suggest an alternative?
Would it be cheaper to swap it for a coil springs type of suspension?

It would be cheaper to get a non-Benz

Yes, definitely cheaper to do a coil system. Check out MBworld.org. People are doing that over there due to the insane cost to replace/rebuild the airmatic suspension.

Even on R class?

My favorite MB models all happen to have Airmatic suspension as well. The SL, the S, the CLS, even the ML has air suspension. Its ridiculous, even my father's old Navigator air springs only failed once from what i can remember.

I'll check it out, id tell her to just fix that one side and sell it.

Its just sad a company like MB cannot build a decent product.

I know..I was half-joking, but this is a major issue and quite $$$$ to address as you see.

she bought an R so that was her first mistake, but yeah thats been a huge problem with mercedes, no way around it really

I am skimming on Benzworld and :wall::wall: @ what i read.
Some guy claims to have paid $2700 to fix an air strut on his CL500. Thats nuts.

People should file a class action lawsuit against MB

Depends what's wrong the compressor or the each side air suspension.Sometimes they just need to replace the compressor and it will work fine.

I do have the same problem. And I had it replaced and its great so far (2 years) but with the SL, there is no other choice BUT to continue with the shitmatic abc suspension. check MBWorld.org Mercedes Benz Enthusiast Community im sure there should be something with the R500