Mercedes was recalls champion in 2023 in Europe

Mercedes sales in 2023 were on par with 2022 but 2023 was a record year for recalls. According to EU Safety Gate, the European Commission’s website for non-food recalls, Mercedes had 38 recalls in 2023 in Europe, which is a negative record among automakers.

In 2023, Mercedes had a negative record of 38 recalls according to the EU Safety Gate portal for non-food products. By comparison, rival BMW had just 21 recalls. But to make the comparison fair, it should be said that at Mercedes, of the 38 recalls, as you can see in the table below, seven were for the Sprinter and Vito/V-Class vans, while BMW has no commercial vehicles in its range.
But even so, Mercedes passenger cars have 31 recalls compared to 21 for BMW.

Still, we have to look on the bright side of this result when comparing with past years. In 2020, Mercedes recorded 57 recalls for 27 models, in 2021, 67 recalls for 21 models, and in 2022, 39 recalls for 24 models. In 2023, there were “only” 38 recalls for 20 models.

Although the number of recalls is decreasing, the result for 2023 is not statistically significant, as Mercedes recorded the highest number of recalls in 2023 of all car manufacturers. Even brands known for poor reliability, such as Peugeot and Citroen, recorded 27 and 20 recalls, respectively.
Thus, in 2023, out of 283 recalls for 246 models, Mercedes recorded a share of 13.4%, which is too high. By comparison, VW, a volume manufacturer, had only 11 recalls in 2023. Under these circumstances, it is only a consolation that rival BMW is in third place in the recall ranking with 21 recalls, after Mercedes (38) and Peugeot (27).

This avalanche of recalls is affecting the prestige of the world’s oldest carmaker, which has the slogan “The Best or Nothing”.

Mercedes has had such reliability problems before in the 1990s and 2000s with rust in the C-Class or the A-Class rollover. But after the E-Class W124, which was for many people the last Mercedes model with outstanding reliability, the quality of many models suffered.