Mercedes' pint-sized A-class hatch, the premium brand's first front-wheel-drive model, could be a thing of the past if news from Germany's WirtschaftsWoche proves to be true. The business weekly reports that DaimlerChrysler is planning to drop the A-class after the current model reaches the end of its lifecycle in 2011. The only word from Mercedes is that it's purely speculation and that the A-class hasn't been a failure, managing to find the homes of more than 1.5 million buyers since its introduction in 1997.