I see MB have announced a near-1m car recall "as their brakes may be affected by what it called "advanced corrosion"."
"The company said the vehicles in the latest recall were built between 2004 and 2015 and were from its ML and GL series of SUVs and R-Class luxury minivans."
I helped a neighbour do the front discs and pads on a C class of that era. The splash plate was completely corroded and I was unimpressed by the amount of corrosion in whole.
The splash plates get a fair bit of abuse in daily driving... many of the ones I've worked on are very bad on 5 year plus cars, seem to be made of very thin metal which I suspect aren't part of the anti-corrosion painting as they form part of the suspension setup. Many people cut them off as usually the hubs have to come off to replace them so are often left.
Not sure why they couldn't be made of a flexible rigid plastic?