Brake pads Brembo or OEM Mercedes

Couldn't answer your first two questions, but the last question about Brembo being reliable is a very solid "yes".

Brembo directly supply Mercedes with their brakes.

The camaro SS uses brembo pads which are really good hence the price tag (imo the quote you got is pretty reasonable). If you want a more cost effective alternative, hit up MSW autoparts and ask for Zlatko. They have EBC brake pads which are also really good aftermarket pads.

In prepping the car for sale they spend $10,000 on \"all 100k maintenance items and known chronic problems,\" including brake pads and rotors

Brembo make some fantastic road-orientated sintered pads, they improved my Street Twin loads.

Running coated rockauto rotors (rust belt life) and brembo ceramic pads. Stops well for under 250 for all 4.

Brembo Z04 is very expensive but is the strongest pad you can buy

Vesrah RJL-ZZ is cheaper and can offer decent bite and is fairly linear pad, XX is stronger but also more progressive

EBC GPFAX is a good pad and cheaper, kind of similar to the ZZ but slightly less feel and weaker

Had my Giulietta's Brembo 330s fronts done (pads and discs) for about $350 with labour and taxes

They wanted like 3k for Brembo front brake pads and rotors for my scat pack at the dealership. I just got power stops instead and had them installed for less than 1/6th the price. The dealership told me Brembos are always on backorder so they jacked the prices, idk if that's the real case... But they were disgustingly expensive. Imo, the power stops feel the same and the rotors are holding up better. My brembo rotors warped before 20k miles of daily driving (mostly highway)

Brembo low dust pads and oem rotors on my 330ci. Rotors tend to warp easy on these so I figured I'd stick with bmw.

We had an W211 and it was awesome, except of course for the whole brake recall fiasco. Thankfully Mercedes eventually sorted that.