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Afraid of Capsizing
Does the small Mercedes capsize in corners?
A Swedish tester brings the new A-Class into disrepute - and scratches on the image of theee car manufacturer.

"Of course we are nervous" admitted Juergen Hubbert, responsible for the car business in the Mercedes board of managers, when he presented the new A-Class. The group did invest roughly one billion Marks ((USD 526 million assumed USD 1 = DM 1.90)) in the new car series and for the first time risked to fight with mass producers like Volkswagen, Renault or Toyota - and this with a totally new concept for tthe car.
The insecurity was over soon. Customers, dealers and car testers were delighted with the new model. ((The German daily newspaper)) "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" praised the car as a "small genie" and announced: "A star is born". But now the star has a problem and Hubbert is nervous again.
That is the fault of the Swedish car tester Robert Collin from the magazine "Teknikens Vaerld" ((World of Technique)) and the so called swerve to avoid hitting elks (("Moose-Test")).
The test simulates a not unusual situation. A person or an elk suddenly runs onto the road, the driver has to get out of the way on the left lane and quickly has to change to the right lane again after driving around the obstacle.
"Nearly all cars" said Collin "pass this test without problems". Not so the A-Class. With a speed of 60 Km/h ((37 mph)) at first the right front wheel rim scratched on the asphalt followed by the right back rim and finally the car capsized. The testers, besides Collin four colleagues, suffered from contusions and cuts and complained about neck- and back-aches.
The test report from Sweden and Collin`s hard judgement -  "the introduccction of the A-Class should be stopped" - hit the Daimler-Benz group at it's most sensitive spot: The security of it's cars is one of the most important sales arguments. With the A-Class the Swabs wanted to demonstrate that a compact-size car can be as secure as a middle-of-the-market car. This seemed to been proven: At internal rear-end collision crash tests the A-Class showed an unequalled security for it's class.
The construction method cares for that. The car is relatively short and high. Engine and transmission are located in a tilted position in the front with a downward inclination. At a rear end collision they are pushed downward and can't penetrate into the cabin and cant cause injuries, too.
But this construction method has disadvantage. With hectic turns on the steering wheel - like with a swerve - a short and high car comes into swaying earlier. "The A-Class drives round corners with heavy slant" criticized the testers from ((the German car magazine)) "Auto Motor und Sport", "but fear of capsizing is unfounded".
Before the start of sale Daimler's own test drivers covered five million kilometres with the A-Class and finished so called tilt-tests and didn't notice any problems regarding that. The factory drivers, says chief of development Helmut Petri, did test the car with a roof load of 100 kilograms, too, and judged it stable.
Besides Collin the Swedish car tester Marianne Sterner announced doubts about the security of the A-Class, too. In the magazine "Vi Bilaegare" ((We car owners)), which is distributed by a Swedish mineral oil- and gasoline co-operative at it's gasoline stations, she wrote: "The star tilts ...almost".
Sterner is member of a jury of European magazines which award the title "Car of the Year". The Scandinavian journalists drove with the Mercedes in the Danish Jutland before the election. In a so called panic manoeuvre where the cars have to be steered sharply around an obstacle they drove "on two wheels and have been nearly fallen over".
Test drivers of Daimler-Benz arrived immediately and demonstrated the swerves a couple of times to the judges. The factory professionals, says Mercedes spokesman Wolfgang Inhester, do rule the discipline at far higher speeds. The car would not have shown any questionable reactions.
The problem of this tests would be, says Inhester, they do not exclude misleading results caused by driving mistakes. But the problem for the car manufacturer is it's nearly impossible for him to proof the tester's way of driving would have been responsible for the falling over. The cause could also be a technical fault: The fact the rims touched the asphalt shortly before the accident is a possible hint for too low tire pressure.
At tests of professional journals unwanted roof landings sometime happen. A driver from "Auto Motor und Sport" rolled over in a slalom with an Opel Astra. The exact reasons remain uncleared.
In the main it was caused by the too impetuous way of driving. Editor in chief Bernd Ostmann: "Who is out for it can put nearly every car on its roof".
That is no comfort for Mercedes. The criticism from Sweden scratches on the already refurbished image of the Stuttgarters at least as much as the problems with the engine development which caused excitement in the last week, too.
The Daimler board of management stopped the development of a new four-cylinder engine which should have been built into the C-Class. At the tests it consumed too much gasoline. Mercedes now concentrates - like all competitors - fully on the construction of a direct ignition engine which, however, will not come onto the market before the year 2000.
It was clear to the manager Hubbert that with Daimler's rise into new times some things could go wrong. As many as much projects as today have never before been given a push.
Daimler-Benz builds two new model rows, the A-Class and the M-Class, manufactures in Alabama a Mercedes abroad for the first time and also erects a car factory in Brazil. In the future the Swabs even want to compete with Rolls-Royce with a luxury car they presented at the Tokyo Motor Show.
But that a Mercedes now is being criticized just for possible security problems hits Hubbert hardly: "To think we would offer an unsecure car to our customers - that's crazy".
End of article - translation by MBEP webmaster
As usual remarks in ((blabla)) but (blabla) belongs to the original text.
The original text uses the German word "Kentern" which stands for e.g. a ship overturning so it's "to capsize"; the magazine didn't use the word  "Ueberschlag" which would have translated to "roll over".

For more info about the luxury car Maybach click here.

Oh yes, another time a reputed German publication uses the single term "Daimler" in conjunction with a car from the DaimlerChrysler group: These cars are called "Mercedes-Benz" so if one doesn't use this correct expression one can shorten it to "Mercedes" or "Benz", but "Daimler" are cars built by Jaguar.