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Mercedes considering Mexico for CLA production

Would you buy a Mercedes-Benz if it were made in Mexico? That's what the German outfit is wondering, as it considers localizing production of the its new budget model at a factory operated by Nissan, of which the automaker is a joint-venture partner.
According to a report from Automotive News, moving production of American-spec CLAs from Hungary to Mexico would protect Mercedes from currency fluctuations. "Mexico is the best location for the United States," Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche told AN. The CLA is also expected to become the brand's volume model in the US market, which makes North American production a logical move.
In the event that Mercedes approves the plan, Nissan would expand the capabilities at its Aguascalientes, Mexico plant, allowing production to begin in 2018.

Fiat contemplating sub-brand to compete with Dacia, Datsun

You can add Fiat to the admittedly short list of automakers considering a low-cost brand to rival Dacia. The inexpensive Eastern European brand from Renault-Nissan has performed on the balance sheet like a premium model line, and the money the alliance is taking off the table is encouraging other players to deal themselves in. Pretty soon Nissan's Datsun sub-brand will join the Dacia party, going on sale in Russia, Indonesia and India and will claim even more rubles, rupiahs and rupees for the parent company. Volkswagen recently said it will make a decision this year on a budget line for the Chinese market. With the euthanasia of Lancia and plans to move the Fiat brand upmarket, company CEO Sergio Marchionne wonders aloud to Automotive News Europe whether there could be room for a new budget brand underneath Fiat.
We're told that the initiative has been in the idea box for five years and even moved to the stage of name considerations, like Innocenti, but worries about profit kept it from realization. If such a range were to be developed, Marchionne says it couldn't be built in Italy and stay within budget, and the company is "analyzing its manufacturing capacity outside of Europe to see if a low-cost brand is viable."

Nissan recalling more than 1M vehicles for airbags that may fail to deploy

Nissan and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have issued a recall for 989,701 vehicles in the US due to an issue with their passenger-side airbag systems. Affected Nissan models include the Altima, Leaf, Pathfinder and Sentra from the 2013 and 2014 model years, and 2013 NV200 taxis. Affected Infiniti models include the 2013 JX35 and 2014 Q50 and QX60 utility vehicles.
Reuters is reporting that a total of 1,053,479 vehicles are included in the recall globally, with about 60,000 of the affected vehicles having been sold in Canada.
The fault apparently lies in something called the occupant classification system, which may, in the recalled vehicles, incorrectly classify the passenger seat as empty when it is in fact occupied by an adult. When the system fails to recognize the passenger, the passenger-side airbag may deactivate, and could therefore fail to deploy in the event of a crash.