Mercedes needs Nissan to help produce X-Class pickup truck

At the world debut of the X-Class at Cape Town last week, Volker Mornhinweg - Head of Mercedes-Benz Vans admitted that perhaps the company couldn’t make a high profit on the X-Class as it does with passenger vehicles. Therefore, it’s much better for the German marque to join hands with the Renault-Nissan Alliance.
 

“If we would like to be attractive from a price perspective, we have to work on things together. We cannot achieve, in our LCV segment, the huge amounts of numbers as the Mercedes-Benz passenger cars can,” Mornhinweg explained. “In the LCV business it’s a common approach to work with alliance partners, and a lot of companies are working together quite successfully.”, he added.
 
>>> Read more: 2018 Mercedes-Benz S-Class coupe and cabriolet to debut in Frankfurt
 

If everything goes as planned, the Mercedes-Benz X-Class pickup will be manufactured in Argentina and Spain; hence, it also particularly targets at buyers in South Africa, Europe and Australia. Mornhingweg also revealed that Mercedes is forced to cooperate with Nissan in order to meet the production schedule.
 
“We had a target of introducing the car X-Class at a short-term notice, and as it’s a global product, we could not build-up one facility for this product. Therefore we discussed it with Nissan if they are keen or have the willingness to work with us. They have a long tradition of doing pickups, and their base overall was usable for us, so we had it done,” the Head added.
 

As production planning, the X-Class will come with two 4-cylinder engine options including a 163hp 2.3-liter turbo-diesel X 220 d and a twin turbo-diesel X 250 d with a higher output of 190 hp.

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