On W124 vehicles, we were asked to replace airbags and detonate and destroy the removed bags which were only a couple of years old. To date no reasons have been given. Yet we have found this document which in the companies own words says that no air bag needs to be ever replaced!! The job was carried out in our workshop by a Mercedes Benz engineer named “lino Marques” who flew in with airbags in his luggage and replaced customer’s airbags and destroyed the removed airbags by detonating them with 12 volt current.
This practice secretly continues to this day and HERE is an unexplained service measure once again asking the dealers to replace certain batches of defective airbags without any responsibility and obviously performed behind the customers back. Certain allegations of air bag failures stand unanswered today while such relevant information such as the suspect car falling in the list of airbags to be replaced, remains a secret to the owner. In short once again the cover-up of failure information has possibly denied the customers evidence of endangerment/loss of life. At the same time Daimler AG does not consider itself answerable even when failed safety equipment is fitted to cars already on the road and secretly replaces any components at will without accountability.