Mercedes-Benz abandons US subscription service

Mercedes-Benz has pulled the plug on a concierge-style subscription service that gave its subscribers the choice of up to 50 model variants after a poor take-up by consumers.

First announced in Germany, Mercedes-Benz Collection launched as a pilot program two years ago in the US cities of Atlanta, Philadelphia and Nashville, offering four levels of membership priced between $1095 ($A1600) and $3595 ($A5200) for its AMG Exclusive package.

For that, Benz covered the cost of insurance and maintenance and employed a concierge service to swap over vehicles at your convenience.

Toyota USA hopes that it would prove a hit with its customers, allowing it to roll out the trial to further US cities, but Mercedes Collection was ultimately judged a flop after only a 'few hundred' signed up for the service.

Following the similar demise of Book by Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz Collection will now be wound down by July 31.

Speaking to

“If the demand would have been unbelievable, then it could have gone further,” Chamberlain told Automotive News last week. “But demand was just OK, so we kept it.”

Thanks to the influx of younger car buyers, Chamberlain hopes that the "mountain of data" collected from the subscribers will help the car-maker attract millennial-aged buyers in the future.

Mercedes' withdrawal from the car subscription arena leaves BMW, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Nissan and Jaguar, who continue to offer vehicles to subscribers in the US.

Hertz and Enterprise are also developing their own pilot schemes for offering vehicles from their fleet on a subscription basis, with trials conducted in various cities around the US.