I responded and upvoted your post when you nominated it, but it was already in the top spot. I've grown to love this car. It hasn't failed me yet contrary to all the claims it would do it almost instantly, and I'm really close to having the car 100% complete. People that ride in it love it and I am constantly asked if I'll sell it...
The negativity mostly came out in the later thread. There are definitely people that dislike the LS, but clearly this group wouldn't exist if there weren't people that were fans of them. It's the nicest and most helpful owner community I've encountered for any model of car, too...
I started going to Jalop and Oppo after finding the people on TTAC way too anal and stuffy. They're all like car salespeople that lack a sense of humor about their interests (probably because many actually work in the industry, unlike Jalop, where it is mostly people that just like to have fun with them). Mind you, the silliness and obsessions with extremely weird cars gets old. You can't realistically DD a really old car or something ludicrously obscure (after all, where do you get parts?). Still, I find out about a lot of very interesting things there. I also get a sense that the members of the community skew younger. We millennials like to have unique things about as much as we like certain items we depend on to be very common.
Don't think those MBs are any more reliable than an old LS with similar miles. The only truly reliable ones I've encountered were ancient diesels. The newer ones are kind of scary to drive because as much as the LS has a million motorized things, they're worse and each one is far more expensive to replace. The BMWs on that list I wouldn't touch unless I lived in SoCal, had a handy junkyard that specialized in them, and at least one car that I could use to ferry repair parts, because that's the only way I was able to keep my dad's '70 VW T2 Transporter (affectionately nicknamed a "bus") running...
