Mercedes-Benz is pleased to share with you the results from the new 2012 J.D. Power and Associates Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS). We moved from 8th to 6th with an improvement of 16 points.

A large part of this improvement came from our volume model lines. The E-Class was our best performing model, ranking 2nd in the midsized premium segment and improving 34 points to a score of 83 PP100 (where lower is better and the average for “premium vehicles” was 120). The C-Class also contributed to the brand’s performance, with a 29 point improvement and a score of 101.

In addition, smart held its rank position at 15th with a 4-point improvement to 148 PP100, but within the sub-compact car segment, smart dropped two rank positions to 8th.

Over the past four years, Mercedes-Benz has lowered its PP100 at a faster rate than both the Industry and Premium averages. Mercedes-Benz has improved 39% since 2009, compared to 22% for the Industry average and 26% for the Premium average. Mercedes-Benz also leads Lexus and BMW, who had improvements of 32% and 7% respectively.