Mercedes-Benz Responds With Gadgets To Attract Younger Buyers, But Will It Work?

Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, overtaken by Audi in luxury-car sales this year, is pepping up its lineup of small cars with cameras, radars and Web access to give younger buyers the feel of the S-class flagship.

The B class and three other new compacts underpin Mercedes's target of boosting deliveries to more than 1.5 million vehicles by 2015 from 1.3 million this year. The automaker is building an 800 million-euro ($1.1 billion) factory in Hungary and investing 600 million euros to upgrade a plant in Germany to expand production of the models.