how rare is the 1995 sl320 production & exported units to usa

1994 SL320 ROADSTER: 1,725 produced SL320-I6 engne (M104): production 6/1993 - 6/1998: 32,223 units The R129 was based on the shortened floorpan of the W24. The Mercedes-Benz M104 was a straight-6 automobile engine produced from 1990 through 1997. It had a double overhead cam design with 4 valves per cylinder. MSRP $85,200 At the time of the discontinuation of the R129 (2001), the fourth generation (1989 - 2001) of production SL cars, some 494,000 units of the exclusive sports cars from the SL-Class had come off the assembly lines at the Mercedes-Benz car plants in Sindelfingen and Bremen. (It does not include the 26,000 units of the 190 SL, this car being allocated to the market segment of today’s SLK-Class.) This total figure includes 204,940 units of the fourth-generation R129, the first SL generation to be produced in the Bremen plant. The most successful model was the 500 SL/SL 500 with its four-valve M 119 V8 engine. Between the market launch and the year 1998, a total of 79,827 cars of this model were built. Vehicles -- R129 1989-2001 (pre-production 1998)

The a/c evaperator was a manufacture defect that was off the line of all the SL's from 1991 to 1996, why wasn't there ever a recalll by the company?? I am assuming that Mercedes Corp wanted to soak their coutomers of money on major repair bills. The average price I got to replace this defective part was 3,000 dollars! To replace this item the entire dash board needs to be removed. I come to find out that the later years evaperators were replace with a more durable item. This tells me that Mercedes knew of the problem and did nothing about it for the car owners.