"Mercedes Quality - Made in the USA" has established itself as the company's new trademark on the other side of the Atlantic and illustrates the success story of the DaimlerChrysler plant in Tuscaloosa/Alabama. The birthplace of the GL-Class started production in 1997 as the first Mercedes-Benz plant outside Europe. Around 600 million US dollars have been invested since 2001 in expand-ing and constantly modernising the plant; overall the company has invested around 1 billion US dollars. Following the extension of the Tuscaloosa plant in May 2005, its theoretical annual production capacity for all model series stands at 160,000 units. The new GL-Class is now the third model series to be built here, alongside the M-Class and the R-Class.

The world premiere of the new Mercedes-Benz GL-Class took place at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit in January 2006. U.S. customers will be the first to savour the delights of the new trendsetter in the spring; European customers will have to wait until September 2006 for a taste of the versatile off-roader.