Reminds me of a true story from Hewlett-Packard (the "real" HP, now Agilent). It was common in those days (1970s-80s, when HP made a lot of its own parts) for the company to review and stop making parts that were no longer needed. At one point, a simple (but custom) integrated circuit was taken out of production because everything that used it (they thought) was out of service life.

Unfortunately, they missed one newer product that used that IC and, discovering the cupboard was bare, had the IC department make a special run of a hundred or so chips. Since none of the departments wanted to take the hit for that error, they priced the chips at $1000 each and took it out of the customers' hides.

Jeremy

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"Buster" in the '95

Our all-Diesel family
1996 E300D (W210) . .338,000 miles Wife's car
2005 E320 CDI . . 113,000 miles My car
Santa Rosa population 176,762 (2022)
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . 627,762
"Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."
-- Janis Joplin, October 1, 1970

Interestingly, my new 95 E300D has BOTH the shut off lever on the IP (which I can reach with a paint stick) AND the valve on top of the fuel filter bolt. I wonder why the redundancy. In any event, my bolt leaks a little bit so I may simply replace it with a bolt without the valve.

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14 E250 Bluetec "Sinclair", Palladium Silver on Black, 153k miles
06 E320 CDI "Rutherford", Black on Tan, 171k mi, Stage 1 tune, tuned TCU
91 300D "Otis", Smoke Silver, 142k mi, wastegate conversion

19 Honda CR-V EX 61k mi
Fourteen other MB's owned and sold
1961 Very Tolerant Wife