Mercedez Benz News Mercedes-Benz Plans To Slice Down Models and Trims in U.S.

[William Maley]

Did you know that Mercedes-Benz has nearly 30 models on sale in the U.S. at the moment? Factor in the various engine choices and body styles and you're looking at nearly 90 different models. This is causing Mercedes-Benz and their dealers a number of headaches dealing with it.

"It has gotten to the point of being just too much to manage customer model confusion, vehicle logistics and manufacturing. Each of these models require marketing support, education at the dealer level, even service and parts inventory," said Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting at LMC Automotive.

Mercedes is going to do something about it. Earlier this month, the German automaker told dealers at a national meeting in Las Vegas they would be cutting back on the number of models it offers within the next twelve months.

"We are going to see models go away within the next 12 months. Within the next 90 days, we might see some of those announcements," according to one unnamed dealer who was at the meeting.

The automaker also announced that it would be scaling back the number of options and equipment packages it offers. Poor selling options would be dropped, while popular ones would become "standard equipment on certain models" or tacked "onto existing feature packages."

What models may get the ax? We know that the SLC roadster will be leaving the lineup next year due to slumping sales. Automotive News speculates the C-Class coupe/cabrio and S-Class coupe/cabrio could also go due to sales falling.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

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[riviera74]

Mercedes has 30 models?!  Wow, they really need to cull that herd to at least 15, and ideally 10-12 models.  GM had too many brands with the same cars in each brand prior to BK.  This situation is almost as ridiculous.

[Drew Dowdell]

Cost cutting has been coming to M-B for a while. One could argue that it started with the LS400, but now they also have Genesis to contend with. 

[G. David Felt]

I honestly see no reason to have more than 10-12 models at most. OEMs can easily go with base, sport and performance models, 3 trim lines on a single model and you can tweak the options. MB and BMW went crazy at each other with building models for roles that did not exist nor really I think made business sense. Flush with money makes marketing peeps go crazy.

[Drew Dowdell]

Part of the problem with Benz (and more so at BMW), is they consider the E-Sedan, E-Wagon, E-Coupe, E-Convertible, E-AMG of each of those, to be different models.  They're not.  They are one model with different body-styles or trims.  If they're going to cut body styles, I kinda expect that. but they're not cutting that many "models"..  because an E300 coupe is not a distinct model. 

Edit: And the first thing they can cut is the stupid crossover coupes.... they sell terribly. 

[smk4565]

I am seeing those crossover coupes more and more, I could see cutting GLC coupe that seems to sell worse than the GLE.

SLC is dead, And some of the coupes and convertibles will die because people don’t buy those anymore.  They sold 2200 S-class coupe and convertible last year, that is a lot for a $150k vehicle so cutting that is curious but the new SL can replace those.

They are also adding GLB, EQC, EQA, EQS and more so they don’t seem to be shrinking just rearranging the lineup.

[daves87rs]

With a global recession on the way, they might want to cut more than a “few”...

[balthazar]

23 hours ago, riviera74 said:

Mercedes has 30 models?!  Wow, they really need to cull that herd to at least 15, and ideally 10-12 models.

Another piece I saw on this news said if you go by badging, the count is actually 90. I agree with DD; that that's misleading and they're all the same cars, not different models, and frankly I never got the unilateral approach to naming the same car differently depending entirely on it's engine for absolutely everything.