C280driv3r

I just don't trust that they will be as dedicated and prideful in their work as German factory workers.

nick776

Actually, yes. I live in Alabama (Montgomery and Huntsville) and have a C300 on order to be built the first week of September. One of my greatest worries is the quality of the assembly and overall craftsmanship.

I know Alabamians (I am one). They tend to be lazy, have a great sense of entitlement (i.e. they want to be paid for doing "nothing") and are about as overall stereotypical as TV portrays them to be.

I'm not joking, I only hope MB has hired top tier workers and not the usual riffraff that makes this State their home. We shall see. . .

On another note, my prior two BMWs were built in the Carolinas and they quality of them was horrible compared to those previously built in Germany.

amanuuh

my dad has a gl550 we've had it since 09 i think 73k miles maybe and no issues so far. i think that cars built in alabama. its a shame that its not built in Europe was wanting my W205 c63 as a Euro Delivery

c400benz

when will it stop being built in alabama and when can we go back to getting a german built car?

mbinnl

typically all American build MB's are the less popular one over here in Europe...

MDMercedesGuy

When you consider that the ML, GL, and R were or are all built in Alabama, I think it is a non-issue. I was really on the fence about them being built in the US myself, so I did a good amount of digging at quality numbers and such for what comes out of that plant. It changed my tune a bit.

I would not buy a first year car out of that plant, given how rough the early MLs and GLs were. You have to remember that it undergoes the same quality checks as any MB built anywhere in the world.

The vast majority of W204s in the US came out of the East London, South Africa plant, and their build quality is equal to the ones coming out of Sindelfingen.

benyl

So, I don't know how much truth there is to this, but my sales rep told me that the C-Class only goes through final assembly in Alabama for tax purposes. All the parts are pre-assembled in germany, packaged together and shipped to alabama. Unlike the GL, R and ML that are completely assembled with parts sourced from all over the place.

It kind of like those houses where the walls and such are all pre-built in a factory offsite and then assembled on the foundation where the house is actually going to reside.

Germancar1

I don't see why this keeps coming up. Really ridiculous at this point IMO. Look at the ML and GL. There is nothing wrong with their build anymore. The cars built here have to adhere to the same standards as the ones built in Germany.

M

rage2

There's no truth to that at all. It's built just like the GL and ML. The only difference is that C class production is distributed internationally now, with Bremen as the lead plant responsible for tooling and training.

Not that it really matters anyways, robots build 99% of the car, and robots perform the same in Bremen as they do in Alabama.

MB-JIM

I believe the biggest concern is not Alabama, which has proven they can produce top quality cars, but the beginning of a completely new model.
Historically, most every completely new model MB has had issues. They get resolved but the early adopters have to suffer.

jbbeauso

I figured this as well, yet I couldn't help myself from ordering in the first production run. I wonder if I should lease instead of purchase, or get an extended warranty because of the potential issues.

joshg1001

Seeing as how the W205 has been built and sold in Europe for a few months now, I hope that they have found and have corrected any issues before starting to build them in the US

Germancar1

Agreed. There will be some initial hiccups. Even the S-Class built in their main plant in Germany had a few issues at launch.

M