Great Wall took over the Brazilian plant of Mercedes cars
- The Daimler group shut down in December 2020 the production of its Brazilian plant in Iracemapolis, where the C-Class and GLA were built for the local market. The results of this production is quite negative as Mercedes did not succeed to continuously assemble cars between 1998 and 2020, with first A-Class from 1998 to 2004, then C-Class from 2008 to 2010 and then from 2016 to 2020, as well as GLAs from 2016 to 2020. Totally, the German carmaker has assembled on Brazilian soil 59,798 A-Class, 69,071 C-Class and 11,526 GLA, meaning a total of 140,395 passenger cars in 22 years.
- This volume represents only 0.3% of the total production of passenger cars in Brazil between 1998 and 2020, a ridiculously low figure, just as low as the Mercedes sales in the Brazilian market. Mercedes has therefore decided to stop production in Brazil for the third time, and perhaps permanently.
- Indeed, the plant has just been bought by the Chinese carmaker Great Wall which seeks to develop at a global scale and intends to establish itself in Brazil, a potentially important market, the sixth largest market in the world behind China, the United States, Europe, Japan and India. The plant will be transformed to be able to produce 100,000 cars a year, four times more than in the Mercedes period.
- Great Wall sold 709,766 vehicles worldwide in the first seven months of 2021, converting to a volume of 1.2 million units for the full year. Today, Great Wall does not sell any cars in Brazil, while Chery is operating in the country for several years. Chery sold nearly 24,000 cars in Brazil in the first seven months of 2021.
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