I'm a new owner of a Mercedes and new member to this site, so maybe this question has been asked and answered already. It seems a lot of Mercedes owners, of all classes of vehicles, enjoy getting their cars tuned to improve / maximize performance.


I understand why Mercedes, like most other automobile companies, sells most, if not all of their vehicles, de-tuned to some extent. In general, it's a combination related to vehicle longevity / reliability / the desire of some average user preferences and having to meet ever-increasing fleet-wide government CAFE standards. So third-party companies spring up to meet the demand of those who want to improve or maximize their vehicles. The problem is that this third-party ECU tuning seems to be greeted by Mercedes as an excuse or opportunity to void the vehicle's warranty. So here's the question:


Given that Mercedes engineers already know what all their vehicles' engines are safely capable of producing with stock parts, when tuned to optimum performance standards, why doesn't Mercedes offer, through say their various performance centers around the country, a post sales service to tune ECUs themselves and thus both meet an obvious owner demand, as well as generate additional services revenue for the company? This would seem to solve the vehicle warranty voiding issue, since Mercedes personnel, using Mercedes' own optimum tuning specs, would be providing the service and, if desired by the owners, ongoing maintenance. Mercedes would still be compliance with all the government standards stuff, since most of it is geared towards vehicle manufacture and sales. It would also address some of the issues I've been reading about on some of the posts about issues popping with a few of the third-party tuners. What am I missing?