Withdrawing a vehicle is no joke. Let’s state that for the record right away. That’s not to say there aren’t some odd recalls dropping in every now and then, and we’ve got one from Mercedes-Benz. And we really mean fair one.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Safety Issue ID 22V935 applies to exactly one (yes, one) Mercedes-Benz S 500 2022. The problem lies with the dashboard, or more precisely, the way it is mounted on luxury cars. The recall summary simply states that it may have been “poorly installed”, which could cause problems with the passenger airbag in the event of an accident. The repair involves replacing part of the dashboard, of course, for free. The owner in question (yes, the owners) can call Mercedes customer service or the NHTSA hotline. We suspect that part of the recall notice may be boilerplate copy.
Digging further, we uncovered the true nature of the problem. The safety recall report states Mercedes-Benz’s supplier of dashboards launched an investigation in the spring of 2022, after discovering irregularities during quality checks. This led to a deeper investigation of sub-suppliers, where certain adhesive types were found to be a bit too weak for the application. Things have been fixed, but additional investigations and studies are underway to determine the potential consequences that result from this.
Obviously, some consequences were found. And as it turns out, that only applies to one Mercedes S-Class from 2022 that doesn’t use the right glue for the dashboard. Can’t fault the brand for being thorough.
There have been some additional recent Mercedes recalls that are more concerning, though we’re still talking a total of less than 100 vehicles. The 22V936000 recall applies to 69 GLE-Class models from 2021-2022 and the GLS450, which may actually have a loose screw in the steering system. The screws may become dislodged from the steering gear and cause loss of rudder. The fix is enough to replace the bolts. Recall 22V938000 only applies to 11 Mercedes-AMG GT 53 and GT 63 models from 2019, which had a potential issue with the center console opening in a crash.
