Granted, Daimler Chrysler is a huge corporation with vast resources. However, I seriously doubt that they'd like to trade their reputation for building safe, quality cars for cars that like to disintegrate driving down the road and putting people's lives on the line.
It would seem to me that an honest and logical approach would be all you need in order for them to take care of this. If this doesn't work then I'd see an attorney. There's no way that this damage could be your fault unless you were off-roading or something like that. You shouldn't have to pay for this.
I just hope that MB hasn't become blindly arrogant to quality and safety issues.

good luck


PS: It couldn't hurt to check out the lemon laws either.