A Mercedes-AMG S63 is moving silently towards me across the clean, white floor at Mercedes-Benz’s Manufaktur Studio. It’s a new space inside the company’s massive factory in Sindelfingen, just outside of Stuttgart, Germany. That luxury sedan isn’t moving so smoothly because it’s electric. No, there’s a big V-8 under the car’s violet hood, but it isn’t running. This car is being carried along by something Mercedes calls an “Autonomous Guided Vehicle,” or AGV.
The Autonomous Graded Vehicle is basically a low-profile shuttle that can pick up a whole car and move it from place to place. In this case, the S-Class is being deposited onto one of nine workstations on the Manufaktur Studio floor where a team of workers will descend, sort of like a Formula One pit crew, but with far slower and more deliberate pace to turn this super-sedan into something one-of-a-kind.
If you are a privileged customer of high-end Mercedes-Benz cars, like the S-Class sedan or G-Class SUV, your custom-ordered car will be plucked from the assembly line by one of these automated shuttles. There, it will receive the personalization you requested, all installed by hand, part of a program that Mercedes is expanding greatly based on exploding demand.
Making More Exclusive
Mercedes’ Manufaktur program, which first launched in 2019 for the G-Class, had initial offerings of mostly special paint colors and fineries designed to add a degree of personalization for those who wanted to go deeper than Benz’s notoriously expansive options.
The Manufaktur program now covers the AMG GT and S-Class. Michael Schiebe, CEO of Mercedes’ high-performance AMG division, told attendees at the Studio’s grand opening that 90% of all G-Class SUVs receive at least one bit of Manufaktur finery, whether that be a limited-edition color or a slightly unusual shade of leather.
Options like those have traditionally been installed right on the regular manufacturing line. This new Manufaktur facility dials the bespoke treatment up rather significantly.
Buyers can now choose from fresh hues of leather upholstery and a range of different stitching patterns and thread colors to create a custom look. They can even request seats made wider or narrower than the stock dimensions—a perfect fit for every privileged backside.
The hides covering those seats are scanned and processed using a new AI-backed system that automatically looks for subtle imperfections like scars from insect bites or barbed wire, ensuring perfect surfaces everywhere. But, despite the hides being digitally scanned and laser cut, they’re still applied and often sewn by hand. I couldn’t help but compliment a worker on the line using a perfect pattern of stitches on a steering wheel, a process that takes hours.
And, for those who want more, Mercedes can custom-embroider any logo onto headrests, pillows, or other surfaces.
Next-Generation Paint
Custom-upholstered pillows are nothing compared to what the Manufaktur program can now do on the hood. Mercedes is offering a new process it calls PixelPaint which allows remarkably high-quality custom graphics to be painted onto the hood. Think of it like a big inkjet printer. Still, where the quality of your humble HP DeskJet would fail to impress under close examination, the painted Maybach logos arrayed across the hood of the S-Class on display in the Studio looked beautifully crisp and clean.
That first demo is somewhat garish, a Coach-style inundation of one of the brand’s logos. Eventually, owners can provide their designs for inclusion on hoods. Nina Stransky, a product manager at Mercedes-Benz, said the company is also considering using the same technology on other body panels, eventually creating high-quality painted custom designs on every side.
The PixelPaint process is digital, largely automated, and, Mercedes says, far more efficient than traditional painting, thanks to a lack of waste. But there’s craftsmanship here, too. The fine pin-stripe that helps ease the transition on the company’s two-tone paint jobs is still applied, polished, and smoothed by hand until it blends perfectly with the rest of the paint.
And there will be far more paints to choose from soon. Mercedes showed off four new hues at the opening event for this new facility. These four are the first of 50 new Manufaktur-specific colors that will launch in 2025, giving a total of 80 shades on offer.
More subtle modifications are available as well. Through Mercedes-Benz’s Guard program, buyers can request that their car be outfitted with glass capable of meeting European VPAM VR10 ballistics protection. That is to say, able to withstand shots from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle and survive a blast from up to 265 pounds of TNT. Despite that, these Guard machines have the same outward shape and style as a typical Mercedes.
Tracking it All
Between the endless exterior and interior colors, plus custom upholstery options and other possible tweaks, keeping track of all this could be a massive chore. To ensure everything stays according to the plan and the wishlist of the person who placed the order, Mercedes uses digital twins for each car. These track every option and customization and ensure everything is installed correctly.
“We always think about, how do we manage the complexity? How do we increase flexibility?” Jörg Burzer, told me. He’s a Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG for Production, Quality, & Supply Chain Management. “The tool we are using for mastering this challenge is digitalization. There’s no way to use paper to manage all these parts coming in.”
That’s all based on NVIDIA digital twin tech, hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Mercedes says it can process up to 20 cars a day through the Manufaktur Studio in this way. Machines are rescued from the factory floor, customized, and carried further to the Center of Excellence just down the road for the most important part: delivery.
In a striking building full of rooms highlighting every possible option a buyer could ever want, those who place their orders return later to receive their perfectly customized machines. Dramatically (and a bit clichéd), the vehicles are hidden under the typical silver sheet before they are unveiled to show the fruit of much labor. And money.
It’s an impressive place, and seeing how these cars come together, the seamless mixing of high-tech and high-skill was even more so. But it’s also a shrewd move for Mercedes-Benz, catering to customers who only buy the best and take the time to tick every box on the options sheet.
These buyers increasingly demand a level of personalization and pedigree in their cars that was simply impossible for a company like Mercedes, which sold over 2 million vehicles last year. That’s about 5,500 cars per day.
This new Manufaktur facility can only handle 20 per day. It’s a custom shop inside a massive factory building with hand-crafted, digitally curated machines. It’s a study in contrasts but an effective one, and as the market for bespoke vehicular creations continues to boom, there’s only more to come.
