Mercedes A-Class Has Come To The End Of The Road

Mercedes-Benz A-Class has come to the end of the road. The German automaker is about to hit the brakes on the compact car that has been on the market since 1997. A brand executive announced that the fourth-generation A-Class generation will have no successor, as Mercedes will focus on SUVs. The so-called Baby G-Class will most likely steal the A-Class’s production line.
 

Hatchbacks are dying, just like sedans. They lose territory in the market, and the next thing you know, they are lost and gone forever. Mercedes-Benz read between the lines of the market and decided that there was no longer a reason to keep the A-Class in its lineup.
 
Mercedes tried everything to keep the A-Class alive. It even rolled out a four-door sedan for the North American market and a long-wheelbase sedan for China. The latter got a wheelbase stretched by 2.36 inches (60 millimeters) to 109.8 inches (2,789 millimeters) in a market where Chinese customers want stretched everything. That is where BMW also offers the long-wheelbase 3 Series, and Audi sells the A3L.
 
Engineers even planted the most power-dense four-cylinder ever built under its hood. It didn’t work. The executives took a long while before they decided to pull the plug on the model that had been in their portfolio for almost three decades.
 
Mercedes unveiled the first-generation A-Class, internally known as the W168, in 1997 at that year’s Frankfurt Motor Show. It was unlike any Mercedes up to that moment. It had a compact frame, sitting high above the ground, yet being unusually short and sporting front-wheel drive. What was most important was that it was the most affordable Benz-branded model.
 
The “Moose” almost killed the A-Class shortly before it was born
That is exactly why Mercedes sold 1.1 million A-Class units between 1997 and 2004, as long as it kept the first generation on the market. Its popularity skyrocketed despite the hurdles. In 1997, an A-Class flipped during the so-called Moose Test, carried out by a Swedish journalist from Kenikens Varld.
 
Conceived to test the cars’ stability, the Moose Test involves a rapidly swerving maneuver to avoid an imaginary animal on the road. It was that maneuver that put the A-Class with the passenger’s side on the ground.
 
At first, Mercedes claimed it was not a problem of stability. However, the automaker rolled out a full-scale recall, scheduling a fix for all the 2,600 units sold up to that moment and suspended sales for three months, taking the time to solve the problem.
 
How did they do it? It was a magic trick in the shape of the electronic stability control (ESP). They also modified the suspension to make the vehicle more stable.
 
Mercedes-Benz spent around 2.5 million Deutsche Marks ($1.4 million) to develop the car, with DM 300 million ($1.7 million) more to fix the issue. Then, orders started pouring in again like nothing wrong had ever happened.
 
With the first generation, Mercedes offered two petrol engines at the launch and a diesel later on. So customers could choose the 1.4- or the 1.6-liter gasoline engines or the 1.7-liter diesel. 1999 brought the 1.9-liter gasoline unit to the lineup, while a 2.1-liter unit arrived in 2002, with the last production run of the first-generation A-Class.
 
Mercedes also offered two AMG versions, a 3.2-liter and a 3.8-liter. However, despite the extra oomph (349 horsepower in the A 32 K and 249 in the A 38 AMG), they were quite costly and they did not quite lured customers. But it was just a matter of time, money, and customers’ priorities.
 
The final generation A-Class arrived on the market in 2018 with more body styles (hatchback, sedan, long-wheelbase sedan), depending on the markets’ requirements. To make the A-Class a pocket rocket, Mercedes-Benz built the most potent four-cylinder engine ever made.
 
A pocket rocket with supercar figures
The MB engineers put the M139 under the hood of the model and called it the Mercedes-AMG A 45 S. The 2.0-liter turbocharged engine generates an incredible 415 horsepower (421 metric horsepower) and 369 pound-feet (500 Newton meters) of torque.
 
There were times when not even V8s could pump out that much. The M139 brought the A-Class supercar figures. The A 45 S could rocket from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 kph) in just 3.9 seconds, which made the hot hatch only 0.3 seconds slower than the track-born Mercedes-AMG GT R. The model maxes out at 170 mph (273 kph).
 
That is quite impressive for a car that measures just 175.3 inches (4,453 millimeters) in length, 78.4 inches (1,992 millimeters) in width, and 55.67 inches (1,414 millimeters) in height, while its wheelbase stretches along 107.4 inches (2,729 millimeters). It’s true what they say: strong essences are kept in small bottles, right?
 
A strong essence, this is what the A-Class has been for years until Mercedes-Benz decided to kill it. The automaker’s Chief Technology Officer, Markus Schafer, confirmed that the compact lineup will be compressed from seven to only four models in order to cut costs.
 
One of the compact cars to be sacrificed is the A-Class in both hatchback and sedan shapes. The move will position the CLA four-door coupe as the entry-level model in the Mercedes-Benz lineup. The model starts at $44,400 in the US.
 
Not only the A is going away
“We need models that will work around the world, including China and the US,” Markus Schafer explained in a conversation with Italian publication Quattroruote. The A-Class “was not part of the plan, and we had to make choices, even though they were difficult,” he added.
 
The A-Class is not going away alone, but it is taking the B-Class with it. With declining sales figures, it looks like the B minivan, on the market since 2005, won’t be missed much. Besides, BMW will discontinue the 2 Series Active Tourer in 2027, a move which would leave the B with no correspondence in the Munich-based brand’s lineup.
 
The GLA and GLB crossovers will survive and will get a new sibling, one that has been affectionately called the “Baby G-Class” over the past few years. The model will be designed to live up to its unofficial name, sporting off-road capabilities and a boxy shape.