Mercedes’ best-selling GLC reportedly won’t be built in the US until 2030

Mercedes-Benz has pushed back the start of U.S. production of the GLC, its best-selling model, to 2030, according to a report from Automotive News. The first Alabama-built GLCs were originally planned for late 2027, and the revised timing is the second quarter of 2030. Mercedes has not confirmed the change.

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Until the plant is ready, American buyers keep getting a German-built SUV that carries a 15 percent tariff.

A two-year slip at the Alabama plant

Autoblog, summarizing the Automotive News report, says the information comes from two people close to the matter, who are not named. Their account has Alabama-built GLCs rolling out by the second quarter of 2030, instead of the December 2027 start the plan once carried. Other outlets give slightly different months for the original date and the new one: Motor1 says fourth quarter of 2027 slipping to May 2030, and autoevolution says November 2027 moving to May 2030. All three land on the same two-year gap. Autoblog’s version of the story includes no statement from Mercedes at all, which leaves the two anonymous sources and the Automotive News byline as the only basis for the 2030 date.

The company’s response is the most important piece of evidence for how firm the date is. According to Motor1’s report, a Mercedes spokesperson declined to give a timing update, saying the company was not providing news on the production timing or allocation of an individual future model. The spokesperson did restate the company’s $7 billion U.S. investment through 2030 and its commitment to Tuscaloosa.

Fifteen percent on every Bremen-built GLC

The delay matters because of the car’s weight in the American lineup. Autoblog says Mercedes sold nearly 72,000 GLCs in the United States last year, and the SUV is also Mercedes’ best-selling model worldwide. The U.S.-market GLC is built in Bremen, Germany, and each one that arrives faces a 15 percent tariff, so two more years of imports means Mercedes keeps paying that duty or passing it on for two more years than planned.

Carscoops put the GLC’s share of the brand at almost 25 percent of Mercedes’ U.S. sales in its April piece, and said the company sells about 70,000 a year across the United States and Canada. Autoblog frames the cost in direct terms: the delay means Mercedes absorbs the import duty for two more years on a model that accounts for roughly one sale in four. No outlet has put a dollar figure on that exposure, and the reports give no estimate of how much of the duty Mercedes passes through to buyers.

Motor1 adds a caution: Mercedes could face a combined 15 percent tariff on passenger vehicles from the European Union under the U.S.-EU trade framework, but its report does not establish that tariffs are the reason for the schedule change. The reporting supplies the date shift and the tariff exposure, and it leaves the motive open.

Mercedes made the tariff logic explicit when it first announced the move. In a Fox Business account, North America CEO Jason Hoff told Reuters that shifting the GLC was partly a response to tariffs and that localizing production for the highest-volume models “just makes good business sense.” In February, according to the same account, group operating profit more than halved to 5.8 billion euros, partly because of 1 billion euros in tariff costs. The Fox Business report also describes the $4 billion plant investment as running through 2030.

Retooling the plant for the GLC

The commitment itself is not in doubt. At the Tuscaloosa-area plant in Vance, Mercedes unveiled new GLE and GLS models and pledged more than $4 billion through 2030. Business Alabama’s coverage quotes Group chairman Ola Källenius calling the new models symbols of the company’s commitment to Alabama, and production board member Michael Schiebe saying the investment keeps the plant a strategic pillar. The same coverage says the GLC would be localized there within the next few years.

An April account from Carscoops sketched the plan that has now slipped. The combustion GLC would move from Bremen to Alabama, lifting plant output from a range of 250,000 to 300,000 units a year to about 340,000, with the poor-selling electric EQS SUV relocating to Germany to make room. AutoForecast Solutions estimated a late-2027 start at that point, and Källenius was reported to expect full output only by 2029.

Sam Fiorani, vice president of AutoForecast Solutions, offered Autoblog a rationale for the delay. Investing in the plant for roughly half a life cycle and then retooling for the next-generation GLC would make little financial sense, he said. The current generation debuted in 2022 as a 2023 model, so it would be in its sixth year by 2027. Fiorani’s reading is analyst inference, and Mercedes has not said whether next-generation timing is the reason, which leaves one question for the company: whether the 2030 date is a firm production plan or a placeholder.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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