There's a rumour flying around the cybergarage - apparently started by German magazine Der Spiegel - that Mercedes-Benz is planning to build the next-generation C-Class in Brazil, mainly to escape punitive (and rising) taxes on imported cars in that country.
Production targets of 20 000 cars a year, starting in 2015 have been mentioned.
A Daimler spokesman said no decision had yet been made but conceded: “We are looking at Brazil, just like various other locations.”
Mercedes-Benz began assembling the A-Class at its Juiz de Fora plant in Brazil in 1999, but that was discontinued in 2010 and the plant now build trucks.
WHAT ABOUT EAST LONDON?
That was our first question - how would this affect Mercedes-Benz South Africa's lucrative exports of C-Class sedans from its East London plant, particularly to the United States?
MBSA spokeswoman Shirle Greig neatly sidestepped the question of Bazilian-built Benz's but pointed out that C-Class models are currently in production in two plants in Germany (Bremen and Sindelfingen) as well as at East London and Peking.
She confirmed that from 2014 the next-generation C-Class (code-named W205) would also be built at the ML-Class SUV plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
MBSA, she said, was spending R2 billion on re-tooling the East London plant for the W205; export production, however, would be aimed mostly at right hand-drive Eastern markets such as Singapore, rather than the US market.