Mercedes-Benz is one step closer to entirely exiting

… from Putin-land:

What cars will carry the governing elites to work in the morning?

Restored Zils?? Oh the humiliation! :laughing:

Russians can still buy Chinese and Indian vehicles, and presumably that includes Benz models built in China. OTOH, it should be easy to bring black market cars into Russia. After your Maybach is stolen, Vladimir Putin may be the next owner. :wink:

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Think about this, if Japanese manufacturers were banned from the US and forced to sell out at bargain prices…

1.Where would you get your OEM parts from?
2. Where would you get your future Toyotas from?
3 Where would you get yourToyota Financing discount leasing/interest rates from?
4 Where would the US Toyota manufacturing, research, advertising or the Toyota dealership income come from? .

Sure you can get smuggled cars and “Chinesium” parts from 3rd Party suppliers but do you reasonably expect that you’re going to recieve MB investment, jobs. financing and OEM support at “free market prices” after you’ve royalty screwed MB or any other supplier?

I don’t know the policial issues but in the US we welcome Toyota, Honda, Volvo, Nisan, etc, plants for their well payng jobs, taxes and their contributation to our economy which has paid off for years.
And on the micro level these jobs provided the tax dollors to suppot the amazing quality and affordability of our Public Colleges/Tech programs which have provided us with our amazing level of Technologically superiority.
Yeah, democracy is messy. we’re not perfect, made our mistakes but we’re not as stupid as the current situation.
Frankly, whatever happens, Russia has set itself back at least 10 years.
Stupid, stupid, strupid!