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NEWS
Citan no go for Oz
Lack of a diesel auto puts paid to plans for Mercedes-Benz to bring Kangoo clone to marketMercedes-Benz has made it official: the Citan small van, developed from Renault's Kangoo, will not be coming to Australia.
"We are definitely not bringing Citan," David McCarthy, Senior Manager for Corporate Communications at Mercecedes-Benz Australia, confirmed with motoring.com.au earlier this week.
As we reported in August last year, visiting Benz executives had informed the local media that the Citan's safety shortcomings would be fixed before the car went on sale in Australia – anticipated at that time to be around the middle of this year.
Sure enough, the Citan has been reassessed by Euro NCAP since then, and uprated to four stars. But the prestige importer has recanted on its commitment to bring the van here anyway.
According to McCarthy, the Citan's commercial prospects are severely limited without an automatic or other self-shifting transmission option to go with the diesel engine under the bonnet.
"If people cast their minds back when we said: 'look, the vehicle's on hold...', because we couldn't get the specification we wanted – we still can't.
"We can't get a diesel auto and the reality is, without that, the vehicle just wouldn't do any [sales] volume. The volumes were already going to be small [as is].
For 2012 and 2013, Renault's Kangoo, the donor for the Citan, sold 357 and 370 units respectively in the Australian market. Like the Citan, the Kangoo offers a diesel engine, but only with a manual transmission. In contrast, the Volkswagen Caddy sold 1915 units last year, and 1852 the year before.
"If a diesel auto becomes available, obviously we'll re-look at it, but at the current point, no we're not," McCarthy concluded.
The problem for Benz is further compounded by the Australian arm wanting any diesel/auto drivetrain to be available in different wheelbase lengths too. McCarthy feels it's unlikely Benz will offer diesel/auto variants of the Citan in the current generation, which means a wait of several years before such variants might be made available – if even then.
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Written byKen Gratton
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