Even the Silver Arrow isn’t immune to the global recession.

Despite being widely recognized as the top car manufacturers in the world, Mercedes Benz is still not as invincible as some people might think, and the proof, as some people would like to say, is in the pudding.

It was recently reported that Mercedes-Benz USA experienced an eye-catching drop of 22.6% in sales in June of this year as compared to the same month last year, confirming the fears of the folks from Stuttgart that Benz has also been bitten by economic flu. Benz USA’s first half total for 2009 (85,088 cars sold) also plummeted 28.7% from its 2008 figures (119,379 cars) during the same time frame.

We understand that the economic nosedive is the key culprit in this whole mess and the entire global auto industry has been dealt – in varying degrees, of course - with the same fate of mounting losses and plunging car sales. But we didn’t think that a company as esteemed and highly-regarded as Mercedes Benz could be affected this badly.

Continued after the jump.

Mercedes’ struggles in the US was compounded by a report saying that out of all models being sold in the country, only one model managed to achieve sales gain in June and much to our surprise, it was the R-Class that accomplished this ‘remarkable’ feat. The C-Class, meanwhile, came out on top in sales, registering 4,583 units sold – down 23.3% from June of last year. Coming in second was the E-Class with 2,781 new units sold – a dive of 36.2% at the same time as well.

The worst part about this whole thing is that it might take a while for Mercedes, and the entire auto industry for that matter, to rebound from this worse than expected global crisis that has managed to choke the life out of the auto industry, regardless of what brand that car is.