Getting started

If you want to include your new Mercedes-Benz in your own itinerary, consider this suggestion:  Leave Saturday from your home city, arrive next morning in Stuttgart, Germany. Use a taxi voucher for your trip to the Hotel am Schlossgarten in the center of the city. Relax, have dinner at the restaurant in the hotel,  and enjoy some
excellent Swabian foods, beer or wine. Monday morning, after their generous breakfast buffet, check-out and use your second blue taxi voucher for your transfer to the factory
Delivery Center in Sindelfingen. Upon arrival, a concierge will take your luggage and store it for you until later when you take delivery of your car.
The receptionist will now introduce you to a delivery specialist. While they're preparing your documents and paperwork, you could take the factory tour which lasts about 95 minutes. Afterwards, use your 65 Euro lunch voucher for a sumptuous lunch at the factory restaurant. From there you proceed to the waiting-room in the delivery salon. Finally, the great moment has arrived, when your name is called and a delivery staff  technician takes you to your shiny new Mercedes-Benz. When you're done drooling
over it, he or she will explain all its features. Then, after the concierge puts your bags in the trunk, you're ready to depart.

The staff gives you directions to the Simovic Shipping Office (formerly E.H.Harms), just a few blocks down the street. They are the official shipping agent and will arrange for home shipment to the USA.  Preparation of the paperwork takes about 15 minutes. If you are not going to drive the car but ship it home rightaway, be sure to take out the First-Aid kit and warning triangle from the trunk and put them in your luggage, or you'll never see them again. Put nothing in your car for shipping that wasn't already there, as U.S.Customs will surely remove it permanently! On some models, the COMAND Navigation system that's built into your car may not yet function in Europe. In that case, you will be offered a Garmin GPS  by the delivery staff. You can leave the Garmin with the shipping office in the city where you drop off the car at the end of your trip. The factory will then shred your 440 Euro credit card deposit slip. It's important to have a GPS, especially when you cruise around in the bigger cities like Stuttgart and Munich. It's a time-saver when you are trying to find your hotel, unless your spouse or "significant other" is a born navigator!

There are 12 drop-off locations around Europe, where you can leave your car at the end of your vacation:  London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Nice, Geneva, Zurich, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Bremerhaven. There is no extra charge for leaving your car at any of these locations, and their offices are open Monday through Friday, but closed on the weekends or holidays. Dropping your car off at these locations is easy, as long as you bring the paperwork that was prepared by Simovic in Sindelfingen. Make sure not to lose the Manufacturer's Certificate of Origin, the most important, almost irreplaceable document, it's your pink slip from Mercedes-Benz.