2018 MERCEDES-BENZ C 300 — Complaint #2018701
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about STEERING:RACK AND PINION filed August 22, 2024
NHTSA complaint #2018701 (ODI reference 11610269) concerns a 2018 MERCEDES-BENZ C 300 and was filed on August 22, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 15, 2023. The vehicle had 57,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as steering:rack and pinion, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same MERCEDES-BENZ C 300 cohort independently describe similar steering:rack and pinion failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2018 MERCEDES-BENZ C 300 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2018 Mercedes-Benz C300. While driving at various speeds, the contact could hear an abnormal sound from the transmission. The vehicle was taken to a local independent mechanic where it was diagnosed that the rack and pinion needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The vehicle was then taken to a local dealer for diagnosis, but the failure could not be replicated. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 57,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2018701 |
| ODI Number | 11610269 |
| Date Filed | August 22, 2024 |
| Failure Date | April 15, 2023 |
| VIN | WDDWF4JB5JR |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.