NHTSA Complaint #11471671 — 2012 MERCEDES-BENZ C300

I was traveling at roughly 55mph when I had to make a sudden deceleration due to another vehicle pulling out in front of me. When I applied the brakes, the car unexpectedly pulled violently to the left nearly causing a head-on collision with an on coming vehicle. After Googling the symptoms/scenario, I found that this can be caused by a rusted and failed rear suspension subframe. The control arms for the rear wheels become detached from the subframe as a result. Based on my research, this seems to be an extremely common occurrence. So much so that Mercedes Canada and Mercedes Germany are replacing the defective subframes free of charge as they’ve concluded the cause to be “inadequate corrosion protection” applied to the inside of the subframe. It seems as though they’re rotting from the inside out. After learning everything about the issue, I pulled my car on to ramps in my garage and was able to confirm that my subframe had indeed failed. This is a serious safety issue which is being addressed elsewhere. During my research I was unable to find a recall or TSB related to this issue, only hundreds of people stating that Mercedes forcing customers to cover the cost to repair this extremely dangerous manufacturing defect.