There is no way for a non-MB employee to actually check US or worldwide inventory of any part, other than speaking with an MB employee (say a local dealership parts guy, or Tom Hanson at the Classic Center) and getting an update from them.
MB uses a system internally called "Paragon" that shows parts availability, status, pricing, and inventory levels globally. Unfortunately, civilians do not have access to Paragon.
The best we can do is to approximate whether a part is available, and its current list price. This is done with three distinct systems, working in tandem.
The first system is the EPC (now ISPPI, or as I call it "the Pee-Pee"). This is the electronic parts catalog, and provides the most up to date information on part numbers, supercessions, and other relevant data such as parts diagrams, part searches, part applications (across various chassis and uses), and data cards for cars. The ISPPI does not give any information about the availability of the part from MB. The ISPPI/EPC is generally very accurate, but errors have been identified and do exist. It is updated daily, but sometimes lags in terms of supercessions of parts and such by days, weeks, and occasionally even months.
The second system is the MB Classic Parts site, which is
located here. This system is run by MB, and is good and generally up to date at determining whether a part is currently avaialble from MB, and in some cases whether or not if out of stock, it is slated for future production (although this function is suspect). Generally the MB Classic Parts site is up to date and is current within days, or a week or two at the most, if a part goes NLA.
The third system is the Revolution Parts sites (such as MB Naperville,
MB Annapolis, Husker MB, or other MB dealers sites). These sites provide the current pricing information as far as the MB list price (and a discount that varies depending on the dealer's online sales policies and pricing). This is useful for determining the current MBUSA list price for any particular part. Sometimes, sites like AutohauZ also provide MB list price info if you look up parts there.
A couple of things though: The RevParts sites can be a few days or a week or so out of date, meaning that if there is a price change, it can take days or a week to be reflected in the RevParts catalog. Sometimes when a part goes NLA, it is NEVER reflected in the RevParts catalog. Second, is that the RevParts sites provide very crappy and inaccurate and pretty much non-useful parts diagrams. DO NOT EVER USE REVPARTS SITES FOR MB PARTS DIAGRAMS -- ONLY ONLY ONLY USE THE EPC and/or ISPPI FOR PARTS DIAGRAMS. Far too many people on this site -- many of whom should know better -- are lazy and use these RevParts diagrams, and end up ordering wrong parts, or cannot find the parts they need.
