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People have a refound appetite for luxury vehicles, decided Daimler. Their workforce in Sindelfingen is working full-time. Wonders of wonders: They even brought temporary workers back. All this as per the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [sub] in Germany. Reason for the sudden Benz boom?
The new E-Class is selling well, and the refreshed S-Class is selling very well. The latter especially in China. China has advanced to Daimler’s largest market for the S-Class. The car is so popular in China that even the police is using it as a cruiser, as evidenced by the picture above.
16 Comments on “Daimler Back From The Brink, Saved By China...”
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On the one hand that’s class, a S class police cruiser. On the other it again demonstrates that MB products in other markets are pedestrian vehicles like police cruisers and taxi cabs but in the NA market are considerably upgraded and sold as luxury vehicles. Brilliant marketing on MB’s part, reminds me of an interview with the chairman of Seagram brands when asked why the price difference between Seagrams and Reilska vodkas which are the same product. His response was because that is the way we market them.
That opens up a couple questions.
1. Why did grey market imports die if there is still a big price differential?
2. Given the collapse of the U.S. economy, would Mercedes consider remarketing their cars in the U.S. to be more cost competitive?
Because the dealers lobbied Congress in the ’80s to effectively outlaw private imports of late-model vehicles. As of now, a vehicle has to be 25 years old before it can be legally imported to the United States as-is.
If cars were as simple as Vodka GM would be the most profitable car maker on earth. That’s exactly the strategy that GM uses. GM slaps a different badge on it and expects to be able to charge more.
That difference between German “taxi” E-classes and US spec Mercedes has largely gone away. Nobody anywhere is buying an E-class with roll-up windows, manual locks, no airbags and no abs/esc, etc. I like manual, cloth seats, small engines, and manual transmissions, but even a “stripper” E-class would probably cost more than $40K. I suspect Mercedes simply doesn’t want to certify a car like that for the two people who would buy it. Although one could argue that the US market has cheapest “stripper” E-class in the world, the Dodge Charger.
The engine disparity is changing, probably because of CAFE; BMW is offering an I6 in the 7-series in the US again. We’ll have to see how many people take it.
The S-class in the picture above is just an example of a government abusing its citizens, not some special low-price stripper S-class that is offered only to the Chinese. Supposedly the Chinese are adopting reforms to end this kind of vehicle purchasing abuse by government officials.
in that picture, I see in the background an early 2000’s Lexus ES and a Ford Econoline van. I lived in China between 2002-2003; and although the Lexus may have been sold there at that time, I never recalled seeing one. I also for certain never saw a Ford Econoline…Toyota HiAce’s everywhere.
Perhaps it depends on the city. I’ve seen plenty of Lexus ES in Shenzhen. Ford Econolines were quite rare though. There were quite a few Iveco Daily police vans. By far the most common police cruisers were VW Passats of every generation.
Even the police cruiser version of the S is undoubtedly a nice ride. They sure have a lot of our their money now.
You can generally tell a police state by the cars the police drive compared to the regular citizens that have to work for a living.
The Italian police is better off. They can even drive ‘n crash Lambos.
No_slushbox: Careful with that metric.
Hi Bertel, It is not unusual for the cops to retain vehicles taken in a drug or RICO siezure, and then rebadge like this to add insult to gangsta injury…
I have no problem with that metric being applied universally. That limo wasn’t purchased, it was most likely obtained through civil forfeiture, but it should have been auctioned off for government revenue, not turned into some cop toy.
If you checked the archives you would find a much better example than a broken down 1980s limo: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/il-state-police-keep-seized-hot-cars-for-personal-use/
http://www.fear.org/ (forfeiture endangers American rights)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/forfeiture/
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-179es.html
Which is not to say that the US and China are the same, you will notice that none of the above websites have been shut down by the government.
@no_slushbox
Indymedia would disagree
http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/126066/
Apparently Mercedes is much more successful at it than GM since they’ve been doing it since the 50’s that I am aware of. In most markets besides NA the E class is a common taxicab, here it’s a luxury car. I think the decontenting amounts to considerably more than cloth interiors and manual transmissions as those two things by themselves wouldn’t lower the price enough to make the E class a big player in the worldwide taxicab market. To reiterate, here the E class is a luxury car and most of the rest of the world it’s a taxicab.
Anyone consider that maybe MB donated the car? Here is SC we have quite a few BMW police car/motorcycles (HP and local area of manufacturing) donated by them. Makes for goodwill.
In regards to MB pricing, a base E class in Germany is 41,000 Euro and a C Class starts at 31,100 Euro. We are in fact getting screaming deals when once considers that we are in fact getting higher models than the base European models. Whodathunk it!
Besides, goods are based on what people are willing to pay for them, not what they cost to produce.