NHTSA Complaint #11509955 — 2012 MERCEDES-BENZ C300

The subframe assembly on my car is defective, as I learned today from my mechanic. This issue is known for my model of car and widely reported online. The mechanic says they have seen this issue before. I heard a strange noise while driving so I took the car to the shop after 60 days of enduring the sound. The shop immediately deemed the car unfit for driving and unsafe. In their words, if I had hit one bad pothole, the wheels could have come off the back of my car, and my gas tank could have been punctured, leading to a potentially catastrophic accident. I am lucky to have gotten this defective part identified before being injured, and others need to be protected from this outcome before a serious injury occurs. As of now this has only been inspected by the shop doing the fix. People online have indicated that Mercedes will not fix the problem free of charge - and in fact they charge a premium to other places to replace this faulty subframe. There were zero warning indicators of this dangerous issue - the car drove completely normally aside from an infrequent knocking sound that would occur every 5-10 minutes under normal city driving conditions.