Wider Probe of Mercedes Stirs Little Reaction

“Did you read this in the news?” Johnny Carson asked the other night in his “Tonight Show” monologue. Mercedes-Benz autos, he declared, “are being recalled because they have a tendency to leap forward without warning.”

“That’s the bad news,” he said. “The other bad news is that while your Mercedes is in for repair, they give you as a loaner a Suzuki Samurai.”

The quip triggered laughs among Carson’s audience in NBC’s Burbank studio. But it sparked anguish across the continent in Montvale, N.J., Mercedes’ U.S. headquarters.

In fact, there was no government- or Mercedes-ordered recall.

What had happened was that the day before the Carson dig, news media reported that the government was dramatically widening its investigation of alleged sudden-acceleration problems in all gas-powered Mercedes cars with automatic transmissions and sold between 1984 and 1988.

But the consternation that the expanded probe and the Carson joke caused among Mercedes executives hardly raised an eyebrow in the Southland.

In Southern California, which seesaws with the Northeast as Mercedes’ No. 1 national market and where more than 23,000 new Mercedes cars were sold in the past two years, news of the Washington investigation produced virtually no inquiries from owners, according to dealers interviewed.

Several Mercedes enthusiasts said that as far as they were concerned, their confidence in the German-built car is unshaken.

Immediately after news of the government’s expanded inquiry was reported, said A.B. Shuman, Mercedes’ national public relations manager, the auto maker began receiving some owner inquiries about whether the government probe included a recall.

Actually, the government’s traffic safety agency was expanding an investigation it had begun last fall into the Mercedes 300E and the alleged sudden-acceleration problem.

Dozens of Mercedes owners--including many from the Los Angeles area--had complained to the Center for Auto Safety, a private watchdog group in Washington, that they were victims of unwanted acceleration. Then the center, last March, petitioned the government for an investigation, which was given a green light last week.

“The reality of life,” Shuman said in a telephone interview, “is that it takes only a few minutes to make an allegation but to properly refute it can take months and months.”

To protect its image, Mercedes has taken precautions.

One was the production last year of a seven-minute videotape for dealers--just before the 300E inquiry--to allay driver fears and show that the auto maker’s brake system always overrides the accelerator. Dealers say the tape is gathering dust on their shelves.

Then, after news of the broader inquiry, Mercedes set up a toll-free information line for dealers in case they were deluged with consumer concerns. The auto maker said it got only a few calls.

In Los Angeles and Orange counties, the sensitive subject has hardly surfaced at all, said several Mercedes dealers and owners interviewed by The Times.

“We’ve not had one call from members,” said Don Fritz of Downey, president of the 800-member Los Angeles section of the nonprofit Mercedes-Benz Club of America, which is not affiliated with the auto maker. “Broadly, the membership is skeptical about the reported incidents.”

“Incredulous is the word,” declared Stanley Kaufman of Long Beach, who oversees about 3,400 members in the club’s Southwest U.S. zone.

If there was a mechanical problem--any mechanical problem--there would be an outcry, he underscored.

“They’re the most vociferous bunch of people you can get under one roof,” he said. “ . . . You pay $30,000 to $60,000 for a car, so you’re not going to lay back if something’s wrong.”

Southland Mercedes-Benz dealers and individuals in related businesses are convinced that the sudden-acceleration allegation is a trumped-up issue.

“I’ve never once seen it happen,” said Larry Heiserman, sales manager for House of Imports, a major Mercedes dealership in Buena Park.

Andrew Cohen, co-owner of Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories, which modifies Mercedes cars, said, “I would bet my life that it’s driver error.”

Government and Mercedes engineers have been unable to reproduce the sudden-acceleration effect, which allegedly occurs when a driver shifts from “park” to “drive” or “reverse” while--say those who claim they have encountered the problem--the driver’s foot is solidly on the brake pedal.

Still, the Mercedes company, whose cars are renowned for high performance, is walking a public relations tightrope, acutely aware of the sharp sales decline of the Audi 5000s in the wake of similar reports.

“We are not blaming drivers,” Mercedes’ Shuman said.

But, he added, “there’s nothing in the car that could make the vehicle exhibit what has been alleged to have happened.”

However, the Center for Auto Safety has a batch of bitter complaints from Mercedes drivers who claim that the car accelerated uncontrollably even when a foot was slammed onto the brake pedal.

At The Times’ request, the center made available about two dozen recent complaints from Californians, about half from the Southland, all declaring that their Mercedes surged out of control. A common denominator in most cases was that the driver believed his or her foot was on the brake pedal when the car shot forward or backward.

Joan Craig, 54, of West Los Angeles, a real estate saleswoman, said she had vivid memories of her experience with sudden acceleration.

Just two weeks ago, Craig said, she got into her new $60,000 Mercedes 300CE parked in her condominium’s garage. After turning on the ignition, Craig said she shifted from “park” to “reverse.” Then, she said, the car jumped backward out of control, even though she is sure her foot was pressing hard on the brake pedal. The car, she said, slammed into a pole, its wheels still spinning.

A reporter asked: Could Craig have been mistaken about the position of her foot? Could her foot have inadvertently been on the accelerator?

” . . . I honestly believe my foot was on the brake,” she said. “I wish they could find we were all crazy, and that would make me happy because I just loved my Mercedes.”

A highway safety writer and auto researcher, John Tomerlin of Laguna Beach, recently conducted tests on the sudden-acceleration phenomenon for the Newport Beach-based auto publication Road & Track and concluded that it was caused by driver confusion.

In some 300 tests performed on eight cars, including a Mercedes 300E, Tomerlin said his staff was able to cause 30 “pedal errors, of which 17 occurred when the driver hit the accelerator instead of the brake.”

The tests, he said, were performed on 180 people, ranging in age from the 30s to the 70s. The individuals, recruited from Orange County service clubs, performed in what is known as a “static test environment,” in which actual driving conditions are simulated in a stationary car and where the driver must react to a series of commands and picture slides.

Of the 17 who made the error, Tomerlin said, “people had to be told as many as three times before they moved to the brake.”

Editors of two other major auto publications said their staffs have extensively studied the sudden-acceleration phenomenon but cannot duplicate it.