Mercedes A-Class review - Reliability & safety

The Mercedes A-Class’ reliability seems no better than average at the time of writing, but the A-Class boasts a five-star Euro NCAP safety rating. In our Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, the A-Class impressed with its interior styling and seemingly excellent build quality, but it’s offset by the sheer number of electronics with the potential to go wrong and average reliability credentials.

Mercedes A-Class reliability

The Mercedes A-Class finished 39th out of the top 75 cars in our 2023 Driver Power survey, which is nine places down from the previous year. This time around, reliability seems to be a worry, with the A-Class coming in a disappointing 41st place for this category in the survey. 

Mercedes as a brand finished 25th out of 32 brands ranked in 2023 – it’s placed quite low in recent years so this is a disappointing result for the premium German marque. Mercedes trailed behind most competitor brands except Audi, which finished in a lowly 30th place. A worrying 28% of owners reported a fault with their cars within the first year of ownership, which is higher than average.

Safety

This A-Class has been crash-tested by Euro NCAP, achieving a five-star rating. All models get a good level of sophisticated safety kit as standard: automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance, Mercedes' ‘Attention Assist’ system that looks for signs of drowsiness in the driver, speed-limit assistance and cruise control all feature. Adaptive Brake Assist incorporates hill-hold and hill-start systems, while all models have an electronic handbrake.

There’s also an active bonnet that pops up in a collision to help minimise pedestrian injury. Optional equipment that helps improve safety includes adaptive LED headlights and Mercedes’ Parktronic with front and rear parking sensors and automatic parking ability.