I have observed a very slight right bias to the steering wheel. In other words in the straight ahead position, the steering wheel is slightly biased right. The car does not pull to one side or the other, it seems perfectly neutral, on a decent road, but the wheel is a hair off.

It irritates me, but is this a symptom of another problem? Has anyone else had or seen this problem. The dealership indicate that a realignment is required. The car has 5K miles and is not exhibiting unusual tire wear.

Would welcome input. Car is going in for realignment in a few days.

 

Sounds like the car may have kissed the kerb at some time.

 

If it exhibited this since new you should get qet a free alignment under warranty to correct it. If it just showed up then something .... pot hole, road debris, curb kiss ..... caused it and you are on the hook to pay for it. If you have tire or rim witness marks or damage it will be hard to get them to cover it.

 

The car has had the misalignment from the day I picked it up. We will see what they say when I take it in. Appreciate the comments, but this is the first time I have seen a misalignment result in an offset steering wheel, however slight. Just my luck!!

 

It's not a tire misalignment. It appears your steering wheel alignment was not properly set initially. Mercedes gave me a year to tell them the steering wheel was out of alignment. If the car is tracking properly and the tires wearing evenly but the steering wheel is "off center" then it's the centering of the steering wheel that is the problem.

 

Correct. Your alignment is probably fine but the tie rods need to be adjusted to properly center the steering wheel.

It's a bit fiddly and most commercial shops won't spend the time needed to get it straight. But it's a small adjustment.
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This was my thinking. ie. a full alignment was not necessary but an adjustment was required. They tell me that they have adjusted the steering wheel so that it is correctly aligned which appears to agree with this. I pick the car up today, so we will see if they have, indeed, corrected the issue.

Thanks for everybody's input. I was concerned that there might be other reasons for this as it could have been either a defect out of the factory or caused by a driver when used as a demo (the car is an ex demo vehicle). The latter gave me cause for serious concern, the former not so much as it is incorrect adjustment and easily corrected, which seems to be the case.

 

I got my car back today and all is fixed. The steering wheel is now correctly aligned and they did not have to do a full alignment. It required a small adjustment. Again appreciate the feedback.

BTW the loaner the dealership provided was a 2018 XF 25T which was a much more competent car than I had imagined. Low speed pull and the lighter feel to the car (presumably due to the lighter engine) made the car feel more nimble. It appeared to be the Prestige model but it did not have keyless entry etc. so it was a little basic, however, having said all that, I was impressed with the way it drove and handled.