Mercedes-Benz USA is replacing the front brake hoses on 30,064 S-Class sedans, Maybach S-Class cars and plug-in variants, because the hoses can rupture and leak brake fluid. The campaign, filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as 26V638000 after Mercedes reported it on Oct. 2, covers model years 2022 through 2025.
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It is the second time the same part has put these cars in a dealer’s service bay. An earlier campaign, 25V116, was filed in February 2025 for the older end of the model run, and the new filing expands it forward rather than starting from scratch. For a flagship sedan, a leaking brake hose is an awkward thing to fix twice.
Which cars, and how the first recall grew
The new filing lists 21 separate model-year entries. The Mercedes-Benz side runs from the S 500 4MATIC and S 580 4MATIC in 2022 through 2025, the S 580 E 4MATIC plug-in from 2023 through 2025, and the AMG S 63 E 4MATIC+ in 2024 and 2025. The Maybach side adds the S 580 4MATIC and S 680 4MATIC across the same years. That spread of trims is why the count lands above 30,000, and the campaign record puts the total at 30,064 vehicles.
The earlier campaign was smaller. The agency’s record for 25V116 covered 20,339 vehicles, limited to 2021 through 2023 model-year S 500, S 580, S 580 E and Maybach S 580 and S 680 cars, with owner letters mailed on April 25, 2025. Its summary used the same words as the new one: the front brake hoses may rupture and leak brake fluid. Only the reach changed, which is what an expansion means in practice.
A rupture that drains a brake circuit
The consequence Mercedes reported to the agency is a longer stopping distance. A hose that lets go on the front axle leaks brake fluid out of the system, and the filing ties that directly to a higher risk of a crash. Reporting by autoevolution, which read the full chronology, adds that a rupture empties one of the two hydraulic circuits, so the car can still be stopped on the other circuit, only less effectively and over a greater distance.
That same report says drivers get no warning before the failure. The first sign is a red brake fluid message in the instrument cluster, and by then a significant amount of fluid has already been lost. The article attributes the hose failures to thermal and mechanical stresses, the cycle of suspension movement, brake heat and moisture that a front hose lives with every day, which makes the defect one of durability over time rather than something visible on delivery.
The explanation for the repeat is the interesting part. According to autoevolution’s account of the filing, the first recall rested on a theory that humid, hot climates were driving the failures, because early field cases clustered there. That hypothesis did not hold. Reports kept arriving from markets with very different weather, Mercedes sent suspect parts to the supplier for testing, and a review in July 2026 widened the action to every car built before a modified front brake hose entered series production.
Plant dates, U.S. reports and the repair
The gap between the two filings is worth laying out. Mercedes-Benz USA reported 25V116 in late February 2025 and mailed its letters that April, which meant owners of the 2021 to 2023 cars were told to bring them in some 18 months before the expansion landed. The new campaign was reported on Oct. 2, 2026, and appears in the federal recall dataset for reports received in the week that ended Oct. 7. A car built in 2024 or 2025 that carried no earlier recall now carries one.
The same article says the affected cars were assembled at the Stuttgart plant between Feb. 2, 2021, and Nov. 28, 2024, and that the S 580 4MATIC alone accounts for 16,881 of the 30,064 vehicles. Within the expanded population it counts three U.S. reports, dated April, May and August 2026, and says none involved a crash reported to Mercedes-Benz USA. Three reports is a thin trail for a recall of this size. Mercedes is replacing hoses ahead of failures it has seen only in small numbers in the United States, and it had already learned from the first campaign that the cases it could see did not map neatly onto the cars at risk.
The remedy is the same in both campaigns. Dealers will replace both front-axle brake hoses at no charge, with the modified hose that autoevolution says entered series production. No owner is told to stop driving: the park-it and park-outside flags are both false in the record, and the over-the-air flag is false as well, since no software can swap a hose.
Mercedes-Benz USA expects to mail owner letters on Nov. 27, 2026. Vehicle identification numbers became searchable on the agency’s site on Oct. 9, so an owner of a 2022 to 2025 car can already check a specific vehicle at NHTSA’s recall lookup instead of waiting for the letter. Owners with an earlier hose replacement under 25V116 should confirm with the dealer whether that car is also in the new population, because the 2022 and 2023 model years appear in both filings.
Mercedes-Benz USA’s customer service can be reached at 1-800-367-6372, and the manufacturer’s recall number for the original campaign was 2025030007. The agency’s human-readable campaign page will show any later change to the count or the remedy, along with the full list of model years for 26V638000.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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