2018 MERCEDES-BENZ GLC 300 — Complaint #2161963
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION filed December 31, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2161963 (ODI reference 11708077) concerns a 2018 MERCEDES-BENZ GLC 300 and was filed on December 31, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 24, 2025. The report was geocoded to Texas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:automatic transmission, 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 GLC 300 cohort independently describe similar power train:automatic transmission 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 GLC 300 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact's friend owns a 2018 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300. The contact stated that while the owner was driving at an undisclosed speed, the accelerator pedal was depressed, but the vehicle failed to accelerate as intended, and the gear shifter independently shifted to neutral(N). No warning lights were illuminated. In addition, the contact stated that the failure was persistent. The contact stated that the owner forced the gear shifter out of neutral(N). The vehicle was taken to the dealer, where it was diagnosed that the transmission control unit had failed and needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The contact related the failure to an unknown recall, but the VIN was not included in a recall. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure, and a case was filed. The contact was advised to contact the NHTSA Hotline to report the failure. The failure mileage was unknown.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2161963 |
| ODI Number | 11708077 |
| Date Filed | December 31, 2025 |
| Failure Date | December 24, 2025 |
| VIN | WDC0G4JB3JV |
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.