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| New Mercedes midsize pickup to be built by Nissan |
Daimler said it will expand its cooperation with strategic partner Nissan to develop a midsize pickup truck for Mercedes-Benz.
The Mercedes pickup will be built by the Renault-Nissan alliance at its plants in Spain and Argentina.
The pickup will target commercial and private customers and will share some of the underpinnings with an all-new Nissan NP300 truck, Daimler and Renault-Nissan said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
Daimler did not say if the pickup will be sold in the United States. "The primary target markets for the truck are Europe, Australia, South Africa and Latin America," the joint statement said.
"Entering the rapidly growing segment of midsize pickups is an important step in continuing our global growth path," Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said in the statement. "Thanks to our well-established partnership with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, we are able to drastically reduce the time and cost to enter this key segment."
The Mercedes 1-ton pickup truck will be built for Latin America at Renault's plant in Cordoba, Argentina, along with the Nissan NP300 and a Renault 1-ton truck.
The three trucks will also be built in the Nissan plant in Barcelona, Spain, for other markets, excluding North America, the statement said. The Barcelona plant will produce about 120,000 vehicles annually for the three partners, while the Cordoba plant will produce nearly 70,000 vehicles a year.
Production of the trucks at the two plants will start by the end of the decade.