As a former E-Class owner and mercedesshop forum regular...nobody considers the XF a poor man's MB...any real MB enthusiast considers the C-Class a poor man's MB...

And while early on a lot of the MB forum members believed our XFs were 80-90% MB...they still didn't consider them to be true MBs...they worshipped the mid-90s and older MBs but would still chose to deify the new MBs than to accept anything DC had to offer as being a beneficial use of the Daimler parts bin...very strange lot those guys are...considering new MBs are hardly something to be revered anyway...

All in all they just considered the XF an impractical Chrysler...however detrimental it and every other "merger vehicle" was to the Daimler side of things in their opinion...

Beyond that...nobody I've come across on the street or within my circle of friends/family even knows this car has a lot of MB parts let alone a MB engine...when they ask if me if parts would be hard to find and I tell them that certain things are actually proven MB bits and pieces that were produced in mass...they're surprised...but still don't consider it a MB...